FEED YER LIONS TAE OOR BEARS

“Oh Yeuch!, they wear green and white hoops … Aw naw - They call themselves the lions of Lisbon … Gadz! … Sellik fans go oan aboot Lisbon aw the time. Boak!” etc, etc, ad nauseum (Sorry, Allan - don’t get that tattooed on yer other tit. Not all Latin is impressive mate. But, that said, nolite te bastardes carborundorum). Sporting Lisbon is who we’re playing and, really, who gives a fuck about all the pyoor mental sellik similarities??!! Sorry? Beg pardon? Ah. Yes - well - ye have a point there. I did go on at length about their strip and the whole Lisbon thing last week. Mea Culpa (McGregor! NOOO! Step Away from the needle). But I’ve got it well out my system and now it’s time we focussed on the real point of interest. The historical interest. The fact that The Teds are one game away from a European semi-final … or one game away from ending our quadrangle dreams (Copyright Shogun Emperor@YouTube). In light of such genuinely worthwhile concerns, the fact Sporting wear a very silly strip and play in a city we’re kinda sick of hearing about means about as much as a Sun front page exclusive about a young man getting a tattoo!

If we’re gonnae be all pathetically obsessed with Lisbon, Lions and jumping through green hoops, we should use this seven-day fixation to some real end. First of all, focus on their strip and imagine our next European opponent is Celtic because if they were, on Walter’s career form, we’d crush them. Secondly, the negative connotations of Lisboa should remind us that what Celtic did in 1967 can be chipped away at still further in the same city.

I don’t ever want to denegrate Jock Stein and Celtic’s greatest moment - it’s an amazing feat: Respect - I just want to see Rangers equal it and outstrip it because it’s been getting on my un-tattooed tits since I first remember visiting my cousin’s hoose in the mid seventies and seeing that fucking pennant on his wall. I recognised the silhouetted League trophy, Scottish Cup and League Cup from my Rangers pennants - even in green and white I knew what those cups were - but I had no idea about the big one with the massive ears. “Youse huvnae won the European Cup - we huv. Ha ha ha!” (I fucking HAMMERED him at Connect 4, mind).

While Rangers winning the European Cup itself is at least 13 months away, becoming the first Scottish team to win two European trophies, two DIFFERENT European trophies, and the first to reach four European finals will ensure we’re already carving out our own enviable history.

In other words, if we’re gonnae be small-minded about this Thursday evening - let’s be small-minded in a REALLY BIG FASHION!

We want to be in a situation, before I die anyway, where we’re all quite happy to praise what Celtic did in Lisbon, FORTY ONE YEARS AGO AND COUNTING, because it’s the fucking LAST thing they did and because RANGERS’ve done so much more. Basically, I don’t ENJOY thinking about Celtic when I’m watching Rangers and the next time we face Sporting Lisbon I hope we’ve won a UEFA Cup and a Champions League - and I hope it’s August 2009.

I know The Gers are the best club on the planet - I’d just like them to prove it to all those silly people who think trophies won is what denotes The Best.

Winning the Scottish Premier League doesn’t get you much kudos around the planet. Reaching European semi-finals does. Reaching European finals gets ye onto all sorts of rolls of honour - winning European trophies makes you immortal to more than just your own supporters.

I want to beat Sporting Lisbon, not because of who they are but because of who we are. I want us to eliminate Sporting Lisbon simply because THEY’RE IN OUR FUCKING WAY. It really isn’t personal - it’s historical.

Last time we played at the Jose Alvalade it was as different a ground as the current Ibrox to what Our Place was in the 1971/72 European Cup Winners Cup second round first leg match. That game was lmost as equally poised though. We took a 3-2 lead over there, lost 4-3 and should have gone through on the newly-invented away goals rule. Ref didn’t know about this rule - ordered a penalty shoot-out which we lost horribly and, as I was saying last week, we only discovered we were through when someone produced a rule book in our disconsolate dressing room … as out on the pitch the Lisbon keeper was paraded, shoudler-high, to his misguided, adoring public.

It will put me in hospital - or even a coffin - but I would settle for something equally traumatising thirty six and-a-bit years later … as long as it PUTS THE GERS INTO THE SEMIS.

Carlos Cuellar is fit. Recovered from the virus which actually peaked during his OG at Tannadice on Sunday. That’s a weight off. That’s crucial.

According to the BBC website, Sporting’s Anderson Polga is out - I’ll believe that when I see it coz it’s just too good to be true that their key central defender is also missing the game, as if to even-up the loss of Davie Weir from our back 4 …. 5 … 8. Polga is apparently being replaced by another Brazilian, called Gladstone. I’m sure Christian Disraeli will be a more than capable stand in for us.

Daniel Cousin is avaialble again…ish. Broken jaw mended. Will he be ready to detatch Sporting’s upper and lower mandibles? We looked like we needed him in the first leg, as if he’d be just what the doctor ordered to rumble up and out-skill their very ordinary defence. But Danny Boy may not be sufficiently match fit.

It was in the Sun so it must be shite but there’s a hilarious rumour going about that Allan McGregor has a tattoo the full length of his torso and that he got it done under the Heilinman’s Umbrella (think that’s Latin for “right nipple”) on TUESDAY OF THIS WEEK! He was refusing to respond to the Bears at Tannadice who called him “Shagger” when asking for a wave. So maybe he’s taken some legal steps against those who printed all that irrelevant pish about his private life - or maybe he’s just not spoken to the right journalists and the blanked hacks are getting their revenge. Anyway, the idea is he will be all sore and scabby when he’s trying to stretch for the shots into the top corner of our net. I find that hard to believe … coz our defence don’t let anyone have shots at us!

If only. As tight as we are this season, derfensively, we let three go past us on Sunday against Dundee United. Under Levein, the Arabs would give Sporting Lisbn a doing so maybe we shouldnae be too concerned but I think The Teds might try to go for the away goal with more dedication than usual this Thursday. We went 4-4-2 for a change on Sunday and I don’t know if it was a bid to effectively seal the SPL title and take a weight off before the big European trip or if it was PRACTISE for the intended tactics on the big European trip.

Rangers are more than capable of leathering Sporting in Lisbon. And that’s what’s worrying me. We’re not at a stage where we can beat opponents blythely, without total focus and drive. The moment we start believing our own hype we’ll be dead in the water. What we need in Portugal is a realisation that Sporting are just the ind of shifty, unpredictable, tippy-tappy, sleekitly speedy collection of weans who will put three or four past us if we forget we’re still gelling as a unit, that we’re still only on the CUSP of history.

We could be out of two competitions in the space of three days. If we lose in Lisbon we might be just ripe for Partick Thistle’s picking at Firhill. Ian McCall knows what he’s doing and half the Jags team was rested against Stirling Albion last night. I’ll be at Firhill but I won’t be in Lisbon … yet spiritually I’ll have a far greater presence in the Portugese capital and I hope we’re all still bathing in great memories of a sensational European night by the time we hit Maryhill for a no-win replay.

Last Thursday, as I walked along to Ibrox for the first leg, I noticed three vans parked nose-to-tail on Shieldhall Road. Works vans all of them, noticeable in the miles-long line of parked cars on match night. The first van had the initials “SPCA” emblazoned on the side, the second, “Rennie’s”, the third “Phoenix”. One was obviously driven by someone who protects animals from cruelty, the other two by electricians or TV repair men or something similair which I can’t really remember - they had ladders on top and all that anyway - but, to me, the first van was almost singing an anagram of Sporting Club Portugale, the second a misspelling of RENNES - the first club we defeated enroute to our only European Trophy win - and the Phoenix van represented the fact Rangers were finally emerging from the ashes of all those years of European failure, to win continental silverware once more.

Honestly, troops - I’m going off my fucking nut with this half-arsed symbolism shit this season. I don’t believe in god but I seriously cling to some superstitious KEICH when I get nervous. And I’m more nervous than ever this week. I’m noticing the number of blue cars which pass me on the motorway and trying to remember my pre-match routines for Lyon away, Wedrer Bremen away, Panathinaikos away. It’s pathetic. But it’s the tension - it’s killing me. I want this so bad. I know we all do.

I love winning Leagues and domestic cups. But this, in Lisbon, is the real deal. For a domestic behemoth like Rangers, this is what it’s all about. This is the real challenge - this is the real arena, the real glory. Please, Gers - fucking PLEASE - disprove all my doubts about this tie. Prove it’s just my nerves getting the better of me. Please … just go through, Teds. It’s so beautiful this season. It’s so gorgeous. Europe is what bathes everything else we achieve in such sparkling hues. I don’t want it to end.