AIN’T NO CUELLAR FOR THE SUMMERTIME BLUES

Did you notice the advert at the far end of the Main Stand on Saturday. It’s a big placard on the wall which covers the empty end of the Falkirk Stadium and it says “Let’s kick out the stigma of mental ill-health.” It means well but it reads wrong and may actually do more damage than good: It should, of course, be worded “let’s kick the stigma out of mental ill-health”. Anyone of a damaged and weak psychological state may read it and actually imagine they are deemed a social pariah simply for being unwell. Precisely the opposite effect from that intended. Likewise, a lot of the Bears who will tonight be once again hounding SIr David Murray and Walter Smith, only want what’s right for Rangers - so I cannae be angry with them - but, really, they’re going about it wrong and threatening to achieve the WORST for Rangers. Murray and Smith BROUGHT Cuellar here in the first place. And they’ve just written off the financial loss of our Champions League failure with one transaction. Hard men make hard decisions. Clever men make the right ones. We’ve got both, doing both.

Carlos Cuellar is no longer Rangers centre-half. Sorry, troops - I’ve jinxed it again. As I said in my last post, the Falkirk Match retort, I shook hands with Senors Cuellar and Novo on Saturday as they sat behind me in the away end. This is why, as I said therein, I hate meeting my heroes, prefer to adore from a distance: Coz, like an inverted King Midas, everything I touch obviously turns to shit (”King Merde-ass”?.

Should’ve known I was actually bidding our Iberian centre-half ADIOS. Suprised wee Nacho didnae fall doon the stairs and break both his legs after I’d cursed him with my sweaty palm.

Sorry. A bit self-centred that. But I was just checking the last thread on the blog before heading for my kip when - knife-to-kidney - Boaby springs a new post on said thread, breaking the news: The King Is Dead - long live Bougherra. I thought I’d heard my mobile trilling doon-stairs. Now it won’t stop. Cuellar’s away and, as with all sad moments in my life - no matter how expected - my first instinct is to blame myself, no matter how ridiculous my imagined connection with the incident. I’m sure my shaking hands with him didnae jinx it. I’m SURE.

Moses McNeil - another regular poster and general good egg of this blog - put it to us last week that this was PERHAPS why Cuellar didn’t play against Kaunas. So he wouldn’t be cup-tied for Europe and thus put-off potential big-time suitors should we continue to stumble and fall in July and early August 2008, a very bad summer for us so far. Looks like there was fuck-all injury at Kirkcaldy three weeks ago - it was just an insurance policy against failure to qualify for the Champions League Group stages. That failure cost us £8Million, we’re told. Well Carlos has just been sold for a Velicka tap-in short of that sum. The insurance policy paid-off. Smart move.

I don’t even have to wait for the Follow Follow posts: I know it’ll be Murray and Smith’s fault, rather than basic economics. The official statement on the Rangers website IS lying - this move is NOT a surprise to Walter Smith. Why else would he say that? But, for me, that’s what good management and Chairmanship is all about: Being fly as fuck when ye have to if it means protecting yer club.

Had Cuellar played last Tuesday and we’d still lost - because, let’s face it, we were THAT bad - then Smith and Murray would eventually be slated for cup-tying big Carlos, taking him out the Champions League buyers market and risking the finacial well-being of the club which so many Rangers fans make their number one goal in life whenever it suits. The idea is that had he played we woudln’t have lost to Kaunas - or Aalborg - and we would have got the 8 million through ECL qualification. Maybe Villa’s UEFA cup slot woudln’t even have mattered in a cup-tying argument - I’ve no idea - and neither have most of the anti-Murray zealots we’ll be hearing from for the rest of this week. It’s just whichever way the wind blows these days - it’s the wrong way and it’s the fault of the chairman and manager who got us to our first European final in thirty six years.

The mass of comment now will not be about what Cuellar did when he was here but about the impending disasters which will befall us now he’s not. Fair enough - we’d be inhuman if we weren’t distraught to see the big guy leave. But at least we ground out a result and a clean-sheet at Falkirk without him and demonstrated the promise of a new centre-half pairing before we got in the kind of money which actually demonstrates what an eye our bosess have for an investment, how they will keep the club on an even keel no matter the resuts on the pitch.

My mate was at the Supporters Club do in the Ibrox Suite on Friday night and was today showing me his photo of him and his brother with big Carlos. Stuff like that makes it all the more gutting. The guy was adored by us but - hey - he’s got to look after his career and we know how the world works, especially the world of football. Cuellar, like Boumsong would always be here just as a warm-up for life in the biggest British league. It was always about how much we can get out these guys while they’re here.

With Carlos I got the most intense season of my life. I thank him for that and I wish him all the very best at Villa and hope he’s an able replacement for Mellberg and eventually gets those Spanish caps he so deserves. He’ll be back at Ibrox, and it’ll be with Barca or Real in the Champions League.

European exit paid for in one go. I’m sure that’s how the papers will cover it and most Rangers fans will see it!

Not.

Carlos Cuellar was a joy to watch - a pleasure to observe in the blue of Rangers. The men who brought him here and gave us that privelege will get no thanks. But I bet they go out and get another Cuellar - like they got us a Laudrup … and a Gascoigne …

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Published:
08.11.08 / 9pm
Category:
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