That’s how WE roll (GERS … 0 FBK Kaunas … 0)

Another nil-nil at Ibrox in European competition. What’s not to like? Draw the first leg 0-0 and yer doing yerself proud in the Champions League. Draw the first leg 0-0 in Scotland and yer in the UEFA Cup final. Keep a clean sheet in Scotland. - that was the motto last season. That was the MO. That was how we rolled in Europe last year - no goals conceded in Scotland. And last season we made history. SO WHAT if the way we roll might just roll us right out of European competition at the earliest possible stage this season? So what??!! Who cares?! Noh me. HELL - NO! Couldn’t care less if our most amazing season of modern times is followed up by our most pathetic European elmination ever. WHO CARES, I SAY! Not me. I’m more worried about the AKP having the fucking cheek to call their pathetic wrist-slapping by Turkey’s Constitutional Court an attack on “democracy” - the fundamentalist scumbags. Why are Nazis always the first ones to plead persecution? Because it helps them justify AND camouflage their persecution of others, that’s why. So who can be bothered worrying about a football result when all that’s going on - especially when it’s a football result historically proven to work??!!

Nil-Nil at Ibrox? RESULT! Sound. Loving it. Happiness on tap.

That’s three on the trot, four out the last five home ties, five consecutive clean sheets for the blue team at UEFA’s Govan HQ and eight of The Teds’ ten home legs in a 12-month period have seen the opposition net ZERO. (The Wee Red Book - £3.50 at all good newsagents and petrol stations) I’m a good host but I hate seeing Rangers dish out the tea and biscuits at my second home. Zeta, Red Star Belgrade, Barcelona, Panathinaikos, Werder Bremen, Sporting Lisbon, Fiorentina and now FBK Kaunas - couldnae score at Ibrox. Fuck me but I cannae help LOVING that. Tonights’ result was pish, the game was pish, we’re all feeling a bit pish … but my starting point for respecting a side in European competition is that they keep clean sheets at home. In our first competitive game of the season, against not the worst team in the world, Rangers have maintained that back-line of beauty, that rectilinear cathedral of defensive solidity which, if I’m being honest with you, I cherish more dearly than any domestic trophy we’ve ever won.

Years and years - decades, in fact - almost quarter of a century of European nights at Ibrox for me. Tonight was the first time in my life I haven’t been wrought with tension when the UEFA flag flies over the Main Stand - ever since they renamed it the Bill Struith Stand the players have erected the kind of Iron Curtain defence of which Mr S would have been most proud. The type of defence he would have demanded. That it took us to a European final - like, YESTERDAY! - has taken me to a very special place in my Follow Following. My lust for the league title was never the same after we won nine in a row. Perhaps now my European ambitions have been partially sated, and to the detriment of my overall ambtion for my club? No - I think it’s just that Rangers have finally given me enough in one glorious season of never being eliminated at Ibrox, to allow me some respite from the gnawing end of that European desire.

Furthermore, that we achieved European credibility playing to our traditional, almost stereoyped strength - DEEEEE-fence - has reassured me that everything in the world will be okay as long as you put the time in. Keep Follow Following and eventually, you’ll get what you want. But, what I REALLY want is the European Cup so …? Maybe it’s just that I’m refusing to really return, emotionally, from my holidays. Maybe that’s why I was so relaxed tonight - and still am. Maybe it’s that the last time I sat in a grandstand in the sun was at Wrigley Field three weeks ago tonight - I wore my Chicago Cubs “believe” T-shirt to the ballpark again this evening - and the baseball atmosphere tends to be a hell of a lot more relaxed than what ye find at the “soccer”. Perhaps it’s that I hadn’t seen my season ticket buddies for a couple months and we had too much to catch up on what with all that’s happened since the last game at Ibrox. I didn’t even register any worry about the score-line until the 60th minute, when we finally moved off conversations about Manchester and onto the game in front of us. I never do that. I’m always IN THE MOMENT AT RANGERS EUROPEAN GAMES. WHY NOT TONIGHT????

Fuck holidays, fuck weather, fuck chin-wags with long-losts. My team were just SOOOO great in 2007/2008 that I’m giving them the thanks they’re due by not fretting in the first comeptitive game since then. I’m giving them the space they’ve earned. It might be poor consolation for the UEFA Cup trophy but it’s all I can lay on. I think the majority felt the same. Yes, after 14 minutes we had the first howls of outrage but, even when the final whistle went, there was nothing like the misplaced disdain heard at the end of the Sporting and Fiorentina home legs last season. We’ve finally learned that 0-0 at Ibrox is our signature tune of European success. Rangers defended like Rangers should for all of last season. And we did so again tonight. Up front and in midfield we were criminal but it’s the defence whcih always comes under most merciless forensic analysis at Rangers. That’s what we’re are all about - defending the faith. That’s our starting point - that’s our minimum purchase. There’s nothing boring about solidity. There’s nothing entertaining about goal-fests. The die-hards know that and attaining a Euro final has finally communicated it to the tourists.

I’ve watched The Teds in the flesh since 2nd April 1977 but my first introduction to the heightened reality of European competition didn’t arrive until October 1984 … when I was 15 years old and maybe just about strong enough to take it. All we ever did for most of the subsequent 24 years was concede ground-silencing away goals.

World Soccer was ordered at the newsagents, Teletext was scanned for EVERY European result, the Rothman’s Football Year Book European section became my bible and my school mate from Saltcoats was the first guy in the three toons to have Sky TV so we all piled round to his to watch Serie A football every Sunday. Proper teams didn’t lose goals at home. Serious sides didn’t give a fuck what they did in attack when playing home legs first - they just ensured they would be the only ones to capitalise on the away goals rule. DECENT TEAMS KEEP IT SEALED AT THE REAR. For so long Rangers couldn’t. For so long I watched Bulgarian, Russian, Greek, German, Italian, French, Dutch, English, Lithuanian, Czech and inifinite numbers of sneaky Uruguayans, mercenray Argentinians and naturalised Brazilians slapping one into our bottom corner from the edge of a badly-defended box and instigate the rumblings of discontent from Copland, Govan and enclosure. Those rumblings were correct - those away goals were the seed of yet another demise in a European season.

We just don’t do that anymore. Even when we have a shite result these days - like tonight - we do it in a professional manner. Tonight I feel like I’ve lost a fiver but found £6.32.

And that’s stupid, I know. Coz a 5-1 win would have been so much better. My pride in our defensve steadfastness is massively inappropriate this evening because we may just have teetered towards the edge of a financial and reputational abyss. Yet that pride is there. I can’t deny it.

When Artmedia sent Celtic crashing out at this stage three years ago what harm did it do the only other team in Scotland in a situation comparable to our own? They’ve won every league title since and reached the knockout stages of the Champions League - the kudos equivelant of at least a UEFA Cup semi - in their two subsequent European campaigns. What it did was HUMILIATE them at the time and whenever we subsequently mention the name ARTMEDIA BRATISLAVA to them. And pride in your results and your history is what football fandom is all about, no doubt. We don’t want to go out to Kaunas. No-one wants to go out to financially and historically inferior opposition with players of inferior talent when compared on paper. But if they beat us next week then we’ll have no-one to blame but ourselves, a massive rid neck … and a fantastic chance of winning the SPL.

It’s worth thinking about it - by way of preparation.

The empty spaces at Ibrox tonight weren’t JUST down to the arsehole Rangers ticket office - although that was a FUCKING DEBACLE for all those poor sods stuck in two massive queues entirely NOT of their own making - it was down to a general lack of desire amongst the Rangers support at large. Dare I say, last year had bred some contentment? Contentment is the enemy of progress in football - if you’re not going forwards you’re going back, etc - but 36 years of nothing and then, BOOM, yer in a European final and no-one can beat ye, takes a while to digest. Survival experts say the more dehydrated you become, the more slowly you should imbibe your next drink of water. We got stomach cramps last season from too much too soon, on top of too little for too long. Now we’re sitting up in bed, smiling inanely as we get back to full health. We’re in no mental state for full involvement in the day-to-day histrionics of criticisng our team. We’re on the psychological Rennies just now.

So, it’s all very well and good being rabidly upset when yer team gets dumped out of European competition by no-marks, but if you ain’t at the home leg when you could have been then you’re outrage can only be as marked as your active support. I want the Champions League Group stages BADLY but it’s more about the prestige for me than the money (although the latter clearly enables the former). My head’s so wasted by last season’s momentousnes that I’m still only seeing the current campaign as an extension of 2007/2008. I just want us to get put out by a decent club. I just want us to protect the memory of that run to Manchester. Get knocked out the Champions League Group stages by Real Madrid and/or Bayern Munich and no-one will think less of us. Follow up your Manchester Final with a defeat by FKB Kaunas and last season’s achievement will be transformed from a crutch we lean on into a kosh we cower ‘neath. It will be very difficult for us to seperate such briliance from such ineptenss if one follows on so sharply.

My only priority for Rangers right now is to protect the memory of that glorious season, barely two months departed. We must give it big licks aganst Liverpool on Saturday - same as we did against Chelsea at the same stage of last season - and have ourselves up and running for some counter-attacking ruthlessness in Lithuania. We need to get fit enough to dilute their superior match shaprness. Kaunas huffed and puffed very impressively for the opening half hour tonight. This enabled Kirk Broadfoot to put in the tackle of the season so far as he tidied up a Davie Weir slip. But the following fifteen minutes, up til the break, saw Kenny Miller seal his classic Kenny Miller performance - a good ball through to Darcheville and a lot of really fast running about to go with the point-blank miss which comes from too much time to think.

He’s good at what Walter wants him to do, Miller - ie running the channels, working the angles, covering back - but he will get into scoring positions and miss. Initially I thought this wouldn’t help his case with the “boo boys”. But, basically, the boo boys are already fucked. Ibrox won’t boo their own. I’m not going in for the wild applauding of the guy either - not until he earns it - but he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want to try. If Barcelona and Real Madrid players can swap sides then what do I care? He didn’t run up to the Rangers fans to celebrate his old firm goal against us - he just celebrated with the fans who paid his wages at the time. Fair enough.And, to be honest, I really don’t think enough of Celtic to give them that much “hate by association”. Billy Dodds and a million other True Blues and Rangers legends have scored FAR MORE GOALS AGAINST RANGERS THAN KENNY MILLER EVER HAS and one John Brown (centre-half with Gough in my all-time XI), for example, used to make a point of giving us the finger EVERY TIME he scored against us - why the fuck should playing for Dundee, Aberdeen, Hibs or Dundee United be any less annoying than playing for some other SPL mob?? Miller looked sharper than a lot of other tools in the box tonight and I was surprised when he was subbed just at the time Boyd had come on. Wanted to see them combine.

That closing 15 of the first half was the beginning of our dominance of possession and the end of Kaunas as an attacking threat. However, it was also marked the onset of our creative stasis. Thomson was doing okay in midfield but Adam, McCulloch and Dailly did fuck all. Darcheville and Miller seemed hampered by the need to fulfill more deep-lying creative duties.

Is Ferguson allowed to play with the use of his crutches next week?

We need creative midfielders. We need AT LEAST Steven Davis at his best. But we need the money to finance that and we need to beat Kaunas to have a chance of that budget. But we drew 0-0 at home so, no worries - coz that’s how we ALWAYS beat teams in Europe.

And those teams are usually wearing green and I usually ended the night by traipsing along to the south west corner of the Govan Rear and waving at the visiting support below. There’s usually a couple of thousand of them. I think Kaunas brought three fans - and one of them was on crutches. Got outside and I understood the look of confusion on the face of the Lithuanian girl being asked to swap scarves by friendly bears: Both she and the Bluenose were wearing the same scarf: At last, a couple of sales for the scarf vendors who specialise in the half-and-half number bearing the name of both clubs in a big European game: They took a financial pounding last season when all those extra European ties at Ibrox came against Panathinaikos, Werder and Sporting Lisbon - sides all famous for their green and white favours. When we drew the green and yellow of Kaunas for the very first post-Manchester European game I felt i should start a charity for the hard-working businessmen of Edmiston Drive …

But after tonight’s result I’d maybe better save my pennies for the biggest business on Edmiston - coz we could be a charity case thid time next week. This time last year I steamed into Walter Smith’s European cluelessness as we beat Zeta 2-0 - look how right I called that! Thid time I’m unable to get angry or seriously panicky as we fail to even score in the home leg of the same round - asking for karmic trouble, I am. From Zeta to Zenit to ZERO? Or more delight against green and white shite?

Could have been worse, I suppose - we could have been 3-0 down to Shelbourne after 20 minutes …

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Published:
07.30.08 / 11pm
Category:
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