Do we LOOK like we’re fu**ing joking??!! (Jambos … 0 GERS … 4)

From grinding to blinding, from churning to burning. If you want to shut up all The Bears who were afraid their team’s stamina might wane, this is how to do it. If you want to win your tenth successive league game, this is how to do it. If you want to send a get well message to Gazza, I repeat, this is how to do it. If you want to send a be very afraid message to every other team in every competition in which you’re competing, this, my friends, is how to do it. AAAAND, if you want to avenge a 4-2 defeat on your last visit to Tynecastle, I’ll tell ye what - THIS WAS HOW TO DO IT! Our flashiest performance since our last SPL outing in Auld Reekie could not have spoken more loudly if it was covered in a million megaphones continually repeating the same message: “We’re not slowing down - we’re speeding up!”!

We’re not slowing down - we’re speeding up. Just when we were expected to blink, we gave the SPL a death stare.

When we dismantled Hibernian at Easter Road in December, it was only an aesthetic demolition. The score-line that day read Two to us, One to the Embra Erin. We moved the ball around the Leith pitch with sublime purpose and control and the main aim, returning across the M8 with all three points, was duly achieved. It was achived in what the uneducated refer to as “entertaining” style. But we didn’t convert the huge posession into a huge number of goals. We were diddled on the exchange rate.

Real fans know REAL entertainment is to be found in comprehensive scorelines, in truly economic football: You want your side to turn each attack into a goal. You want your side to use all possession to a definite, concrete tangible end. This, of course, never happens but you have to understand what perfection is before you can judge against it. The levels of enjoyment to be gleaned from a game lies in how far up the sliding scale of Possession-To-Goals your side can move itself. In our last game of 2007 Hibs scored with their first attack of the second half, and if they’d done the same with their second we’d be on “only” eight straight wins tonight.

Tonight. Aaaaah, tonight, tonight, this wonderful footballing night, this - dare I say - this potentially PIVOTAL evening. Tonight, as we trod off the capital’s Gorgie grass, the demolition was far more faithfully reflected by the final score-line. This was a REAL drubbing. Rangers were as pleasing to the untutored eye as we’ve been all season - you could even imagine a Man United season ticket-holder appreciating some of our passages of play - and The Gers were also bringing some tears to the professorial eyes among our number. As brutally brilliant as we were, the drive for victory coated the entire performance with a sheen of professionalism which brought a lump to the Red, White and Blue throat. We were a team on fire, a side burning with desire.

The only coasting came when the game was done - and it was done after 44 minutes, dusted after 53. Yet even the showboating - wee Nacho has a back-heel flicking go at goal in 75 minutes - resulted in a fourth goal. This was the strike which ensured we’re not only level with Celtic’s goal-difference, but that we’ve scored as many goals as them too. Nacho’s cheeky chap finish had a very substantial end-result: The ways in which Celtic can catch us are being steadily eliminated.

Who said we’d tire? Who was afraid we’d wilt? What clown concocted the notion Rangers might fold at the mere sight of the burgeoning fixture list? Aye, well, okay, I might have had a FEW concerns in that dirction myself but NOT ANY LONGER!! Even someone as pessemistic by nature as my Fat Blue self, was left with few worries by the end of this game. We’re not getting weary - we’re getting leary. We’re not slowing, we’re speeding. We’re not ailing or shi*e - we’re scaling new heights!

Hearts had a few major omissions from their team sheet but - MAN! - so did we! The Jambos were in fact fielding the same starting XI for only the second time this millenium and it’s the fact that we stamped them into their own lush and lovely pitch with a new line-up and fresh tactic which makes it all so doubly, trebly, FOUR TROPHY-TASTICALLY wonderful!!

Christian Dailly made only his second appearance for us tonight and his first ever start. After watching him play like a skilful Claude Makelele, I have to continually remind mysef this was his full debut. Talk about “slotting in”…! Steven Davis has become a beautiful mesh of Stuart McCall and Trevor Steven, and he’s achieved this in what seems like a heart-beat. Barry Ferguson may be uncomfortably crucial to the consumation of our silverware lustings but he had himself a wee holiday tonight, by pushing up-front to support The Darche/The Nachster. You could clearly see Baz was enjoying a night away from the midfield mire. The first few balls played into him landed just behind his heels, as everyone adjusted and this helped my darker worries take more shape - but by the close of play Barry was running about with such obvious enthusiam it was thrillingly obvoius the change had been as good as a rest.

The defence had a night off, rather than an off night. Maybe it was the fact they’d just heard Kenny Deuchar had emigrated. Maybe it was the desire to give Christian Nade as hard a time tonight as he’d given them on our last Gorgie gig. Maybe it was the fact that Davie Weir, Carlos Cuellar and Alan Mcgregor are 2008’s most solidly dependable back unit in Britain outside of Old Trafford (I don’t care if it is a lying stat - I’m having it!) which had me smoking the cigars for them by the hour mark. Or maybe, like everyone else in Rangers colours this evening, it was just the phenomenally effective realigning of the midfield core which allowed our defensive trio to be so downright CLASSY.

I’d was chatting with a fellow Bear at work today re the secret of this season’s ridiculously consistent performances. It’s’tempting, always, to see a good goalie and two sublime centre-haves as the most “solid” part of any team. But, I expertly informed my steadily wilting colleague, I feel it’s the midfield combos at Rangers in 2007/2008 which hold the key. We have to have Ferguson in there with one of Thomson or Hemdani for us to be safe. When all three play, I surmised, we’re unplayable. I based this claim on the fact all three played that day at Easter Road when the ball became stuck to Rangers feet but, more pointedly, on the fact all three eplayed in Lyon, our best performance of the season by a metric mile (three attacks, three goals - that’s no false economy!). What I kinda handily forgot, and by this time my colleague was too fast asleep to pick me up on the point, was that the Brahim-Bazza-Thommo triumvirate also played in both of our only home defeats this season … to LYON AND HIBS!! Aherm.

Anyway, ignoring those pesky “facts”, I felt the tight packing of these three players gave us a power base of ball-winning, posession, skill and vision around which everyone else could hardly fail to do their jobs and look good doing them. One can win the ball, one can hold it, one can play it - this is the most simplistic view of these three key men. But, in reality, they each have enough of the other two’s skills to continually bring the best out of their eight team-mates. If there was anything lacking in our last few games I could carelessly attribute it to Thomson and then Brahim’s absence. However, this evening, like Martin Luther cowering in that seminal storm 500 years ago, my mind was changed. Kevin’s substitute appearance near the end was a massive boost, yes, but not half as encouraging as the sight of Christian Dailly, Steven Davis and Barry Ferguson turning a triangle of midfield menace into a central spine of indefatigability.

Dailly protected the defence from almost the edge of our own box. Davis came deep and carried play forward either with ball at foot or with the most wide-ranging variety of passes and crosses to be seen outside Helmand Province. Barry? Barry Ferguson just turned it all into goals. His flick-on of Davis’ beautifuly won and played ball in 25 minutes gave Darche no option but to complete the whole move as officially ORGASMIC by lashing the ball across Stevie “Gordon” Banks and into the far corner of the net. Bazza’s snap-shot from the edge of the box on 43 minutes led to the corner which he placed on Carlos Cuellar’s brilliant big heid -to nod onto Stevie Naismith … who turned it onto Darche … a Gerdy Muller finish of sclaffing genius made it 2-0.

Our captain then took a briliantly won ball from Nacho and sprayed it out to Charlie Adam. Chaz worked his swivel-hipped magic on the box’s edge and played a peach of a ball into the timeously arrived Nach to make it 3-0 and game over. But not before Bazz had played it out to Steve Davis on the wide right after 70 minutes: In comes the one-time Norn Iron captain’s cross, backwards goes Nacho’s heel, onward and upwards go Rangers.

This is the most spectacular performance we’ve put in since the departure of Alan Hutton and one which goes a way to quelling all worries about potential defecits to our personell. Big Kirk Broadfoot can play brilliantly enough in this company and is overlaping as dangerously as Al ever did. He gets more skliflul with every game, big Silky Kirky. Whittaker rather over-egged it at times but I think he sometimes gets confused by the booing at Tynecastle and Easter Road - he’s naturally cocky anyway, because he’s supremely gifted, but when he tries to turn his confidence into show-boating his focus goes. He was rarely troubled, mind.

All those years I spent flat-sharing with Alexander McQueen, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Stella McCartney haven’t paid off. Not only do I dress like a tramp with a discount at Top Shop, but I can’t be sure what the term “clash” means in the non-footballing sartorial world. I have a funny feeling it means colours which are so similair they actually jar the elegant eye. Yet it’s a pejorative term. In football, I LOVE colour clashes: The Teds could not wear their goriously traditional, and utterly gorgeous, Red and Black socks tonight - the ones which look so fabulously incongrous to our efficiently white shorts and silky blue top - because they have a passing resemblance to all-maroon stockings. When I saw us in the UN-clashing white socks my heart sank. It always does when I see us without the “R&Bs”, the most distinctive third of our strip. Yet, this evening, as the sides emerged from the tunnel, I felt the depression more keenly, as it all too readily complemented a spiralling air of worry:

Nine wins on the trot, no defeats since Lyon at Ibrox - just the sheer weight of all those good performances, the ever-present horror of the unforgiving Law of Avergaes, was enough to have me chewing the false nails this afternoon. The fact we’d lost three goals in our last two games - even if they were to a wonder strike and a wonder striker - also chaffed the grey matter as we revisited a ground which last saw us lose 4-2. But, most of all, I think I have a psychological problem with even MENTIONING the phrase “Ten In A Row”. I always BELIEVE we CAN win - but I hate blind optimism. Yet it doesn’t take much to convert that instinct into blind pessemism. We sang about Ten-In-A-Row for a few seasons in the nineties - that was always fate-tempting as far as I was concerned. That the tenth season was the only one in twelve in which we DIDN’T win the league is my biggest footballing regret outside our erstwhile inability to justify ourselves in Europe. Since May 1998, the phrase “Ten In A Row”, be it ten league titles or ten league wins or ten tins of beans sat in a row on a corner shop’s shelf, has sunk me into a greyish state of mind.

Yet, how warmly approprate that, just when he most needs his friends, Gazza could have his name Swung High and Swung Low this evening - this evening when The Rangers DID achieve Ten In A Row. Gazz would have been the first one to tell you that Stevie Frail looks like a less hirsute Mick Hucknall. He’d also appreciate the fact that Hearts have a defender whose surname sounds like “Carrot-Penis” .. and that Karipidis got smacked in that very area by the ball this evening. But, he wasn’t just all about having a laugh when he was at Ibrox, oor Gazza - he was mostly about scintilating football with gloriously triumphant end results. He’d have loved the way we played this evening and the way we abandoned the “churning out” modus operandi just at the time it may have been confused with tired legs and weakening wills.

Had our domination of play been as total as we’d like to imagine, we could have SCORED ten in a row. By the end of the game Christian Dailly wasn’t just in the Hearts box for corners - he was there for fun. He and Steve Davis must have covered every blade of grass and Carlos Cuellar’s aerial threat could have teed-up a few more. But, as a club, we don’t deal in Ifs and Buts - we deal in facts. Like a gambling addict who dampens the thrill of his wins by ruing the meagreness of his stake, tight title races usually see Celtic’s continued failure to falter remove a smidgen of sheen from any Gers league win. Not tonight. Tonight we were so relentlessly ruthless, it was like watchig Italy or Argentina at their best.

And the fact Celtic also won this evening clearly means this Rangers team will rise further to the challenge. oh, aye it does.

To do what we did this evening, with Boyd and Cousin remaining on the bench, Hemdani out, Hutton sold and Thomson barely featuring, is a sign of a team with infinite options and deep wells of hunger. Most of all, though, it shows a LOVE of intense competition. If we win or lose the title before the last day of this SPL season, whoever plays us in our remaining “meaningless” fixtures will probably humiliate us. Because it’s the true test which motivates this side, and its management team. Darcheville cant stop scoring against Hearts - for us AND Bordeaux - and Nacho Novo clearly enjoys Tynecastle. But, more than that, this Rangers side just LOVES to do what it has to do. Normally a 4-0 win would have me worrying we’re scoring too MANy goals - I feel we have to spread them out more evenly across the season as well as the team if we’re to go all the way - but when people have begun to doubt your ability to last the pace, its just the right time to win 4-0.

This wasn’t just an easy win, this was a dark, menacing promise to anyone who thinks they’re gonnae get in our way. From the Free State of Bremen to the total state of the Fir Park pitch, from the Weserstadion to Westfield stadium, from Diego to Lee Wilkie - The Gers have just completed Ten-In-A-Row. And by this season’s end we want Four In A Row, on one shelf, in our trophy cabinet.