MOTHER-CHUCKING IMMENSE

It’s over twenty seven years since Rangers won a league game at Parkhead and then failed to win the league.

Only twice in the last thirty years have we won the league title without enjoying a victory at Parkhead.

It’s over FIFTY FIVE YEARS since Rangers won the league WITHOUT taking a single point from Parkhead.

Second Glasgow derby in four days. Second one away from home. Second trip in six days to the home of a team in green-and-white hoops. Playing a proper Champions League team for the 15th time this season - not including the friendlies against Ajax and Chelsea. Our biggest SPL game of the season - for the 31st time in 2007/2008. And yet, after both Wednesday night and a week on Sunday, Rangers will play games MORE IMPORTANT than both our impending trips to Breezeblock Boulevard.

Obviously, the Scottish Cup match at home to East Stirlingshire was our most important game of the season to date - Coz it was THAT NIGHT, ironically, that we sealed our status as the Clydesdale Bank’s best Matchday Hospitality Specialists of 2007/2008 (the pies were at JUST the right temperature, laced with the perfect amount of speed, and served by the lassies fae Legs & Co, with the crowd noise piped into the Clydesdale Bank’s glass box up the back of the Govan actually fae a Buenos Aires Superclásico) but how strange it is to be facing the hairy hoops at Darkhead, knowing we have bigger fish to fry.

Don’t mention the potato famine but Celtic, if ye like, are the chips in this fish supper of a season. It’s been bad for my health but it’s been fucking delicious so far.

Fiorentina home and away and a possible first ever UEFA Cup final, dwarves Celtic away and away and a possible FIFTY SECOND securing of the Scottish league title (one for every week of the year - THAT’s a BOOK if ever I wrote one). But dwarves can still be right nasty cunts.

This is an Old Firm derby. I’m not trying to effect some outer-coating of nonchalance here. I will have as much sleep this Tuesday night as a father of teething quintuplets whose just downed his third mug of espresso. One look through the past few rants on this blog will show ye quite plainly that I’m utterly fucking wrecked with wracked nerves these days. The better The Gers do, the more we have to lose. I’m kakking it - more than those quintuplets. No, when I say our UEFA Cup tilt is more important than our SPL push, it’s more that I’m just trying to work out the different ways in which this next game can go wrong.

The obvious ways are that Celtic are the reigning champs, a fucking good team, are bitter as fuck (a) in general and (b) even more so because of all the bad results and reports they’ve been getting recently, and they wurnae exactly played off the park by us when we last beat them - and that was at OUR place. This mid-week Celtic’s players will not be as distracted by the Rangers fans as they seem to be at Ibrox and they will relish facing us at their home ground for the first time in over a year. Absence makes the hate grow stronger. It will be like a Champions League night for them - and, good as we are, we’re not as good as Milan or Manchester United. Strachan has beaten both of them at Parkhead. These are the ways things can go wrong in our next game.

But what concerns me most is the possible pitfall which effects us as much as them - the fact that Celtic NEED to win this game and we don’t. The fact that Celtic have NOTHING ELSE TO PLAY FOR BUT THE SPL TITLE, is the very kind of vision-tunnelling which any professional footballer just LOVES. That Rangers actually have more glamorous and important games to be played this season is a testament to how well we’ve done - I wouldn’t want it any other way and neither would Clydesdale Bank Manager of the Year, Walter Smith (Ibrox branch - makes those tellers work miracles for him in a customer-facing environment filled with the most demanding members of the public). But I worry that we might subconsciously see that as an out if things get a bit tougher out there thsi Wednesday than they have been all season.

Celtic CAN pound us like Werder Bremen. Celtic CAN lay on Barcelona-esque pressure. If we think for one second that being in the last four of the UEFA Cup means anything other than just that, if we forget for another second that the CIS League Cup is the only trophy we have any right to call ours this season or if we forget that we’re still the only thing between our greatest rivals and three-in-a-row, then we’ll be turned over - coz Celtic will throw everything at us this Wednesday. And Neil Lennon will be sent to the stand, or arrested, or bottle himself at The Rangers End … or something. Everything we will experience in Florence - except the shit, bent policing and EVERYTHING outside the stadium … AND the stadium itself (a modernist dreamscape) - we will experience at Parkhead on 16th April 2008.

It’ll be hell.

But I think that’s where Christian Dailly was forged.

I want the UEFA Cup more but we’ve come to far for losing the domestic treble to be anything other than a disaster. I compare the Scottish title to a mother’s love, and the UEFA Cup to that of your future wife. You were raised on one - it provided ample nourishment for your younger years, it helped you grow and kept you warm in its bosom. But you must go to the latter love, the later lady, for your own sake. She’s more glamorous to you - you dream about her sparkly, magical ways in more lascivious and haunting ways - but, ultimately, she’s where you have to be, where you have to go if you’re to develop properly.

Yet, as much as I lust after that European trophy, as much as I know it’s our rightful destiny - our mature place - I’ll never disrespect the first title I ever loved.

Obviously, seeing as I’m still living with my mum at 38-and-three-quarters and haven’t yet met the right - erm,”lady” - I’m just guessing at all this. Here I sit, in my sad wee room, obesity hanging over my too-worn chair, preparing my vacuous footballing stats and coincidences like Kilgour Trout pathetically preparing the routes for his paper boys, knowing that a UEFA Cup in the Ibrox trophy cabinet is still a wild dream - and that what lies between us and SPL glory, is a couple of wild nightmares.

It’s over twenty seven years since Rangers won a league game at Parkhead and then failed to win the league.

Only twice in the last thirty years have we won the league title without enjoying a victory at Parkhead.

It’s over FIFTY FIVE YEARS since Rangers won the league WITHOUT taking a single point from Parkhead.

Take a point from this latest derby and we’ve all but clinched the SPL. Win tomorrow and it’s over. Lose and Celtic will have momentum and history on their side as they head into the next derby.

I’d leave Stevie Smith for now. Get Papac in, with Broadfoot, for fullbacks. Clydesdale Bank Player Of The Year Carlos Cuellar and Davie Weir with Hemdani and Dailly in front. Ferguson and Davis playing it to Cousin and Darcheville. Alan McGregor will get another chance to find out what it was really like to be Andy Goram. What he dealt with in Bremen will be the only thing he’s faced so far to compare with what he faces at Parkhead next.

Sleeves up, studs in, draw a line and BREAK, Gers - defend and BREAK. Chasing glamorous dreams is always easy - who wouldn’t lose some weight and purchase some smart togs when there’s the promise of a young, beautiful, sex-on-sticks woman at the end of it. But taking yer mum tae hospital when she’s poorly is far more important. This is the night we find out what we’re truly made of, Teds. This is a night where ye have to fight through the muck of reality to recapture the glint of yer dreams.

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Published:
04.15.08 / 8pm
Category:
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