Caniggia and Arveladze fire Rangers to the top

Graham Clark at Ibrox
Thursday September 12, 2002
The Guardian

The fortunes of Rangers and Celtic are forever inter-linked, so following the champions' defeat against Motherwell at Fir Park on Tuesday the Ibrox team had the chance to go top of the Premier League with a victory over Hearts here last night.

The opportunity was too good to pass up and so for the first time since August, 2000, it is Rangers who are ahead of the rest.

They began quite brightly and in a feverish opening spell they made life extremely difficult for the visitors.

Hearts goalkeeper Roddy McKenzie fumbled a Shota Arveladze shot after just five minutes but Steven Pressley, being tipped for a Scotland comeback, reacted quicker than Ronald de Boer and the first chance was lost.

McKenzie, though, made a better job of holding the next effort from Barry Ferguson and he found himself under siege for several minutes as De Boer, Fernando Ricksen and Arveladze all lined up to try their luck but failed.

Bob Malcolm, Caniggia and Arveladze then handed De Boer an outstanding opportunity but the Dutchman fired wildly over the bar. The visitors grew in confidence as time went on and Rangers' missed chances mounted and they proceeded to launch an attack of their own which ended only when Phil Stamp's brilliant header from a Jean-Louis Valois cross bounced off the top of the bar.

Heqrts coped rather comfortably for some time. So much so they became more ambitious - although just when they thought it was safe, of course, Rangers struck.

A Mark de Vries header from a Valois corner had just rebounded from the post in a good Hearts spell when De Boer picked the ball up out on the right, measured his cross perfectly and Caniggia dived in to make it 1-0 after 40 minutes.

The second half was only five minutes old when De Boer limped off to be replaced by Billy Dodds, a rare sighting of the former Aberdeen and Dundee striker.

The first chance of the period fell to the visitors when Andy Kirk sent de Vries clear but Stefan Klos did well to block the effort.

Play then swung to the other end and it was the turn of Pressley, being watched by international manager Berti Vogts, to impress as not for the first time he rescued his side with a last-ditch block on Arteta.

The Ibrox team seemed re luctant to press home their advantage while Hearts appeared incapable of providing any alternatives.

The Tynecastle team then tried to change that with 15 minutes left when Gary Wales and Kevin Twaddle joined the fray in place of Kirk and Steven Boyack but all that did was signal a second goal for the Ibrox team three minutes later as Caniggia and Dodds set up Arveladze for a simple finish.


Taken from the Guardian/Observer