McLeish lives on his nerves again

Graham Clark at Ibrox Park
Monday February 17, 2003
The Guardian

Celtic's match with Motherwell had already been postponed so this result was just about as bad as Martin O'Neill's team could have envisaged. The champions had to watch Rangers move six points clear at the top of the table while also lamenting their frustration at failing to get in a game before they entertain Stuttgart in the Uefa Cup on Thursday. A fixture pile-up may yet wreck their season.

In a different way it was a frustrating day for the Rangers manager Alex McLeish, too, as he is becoming accustomed to watching his team fail to kill off opponents who instead make him and his players live on their nerves until the whistle.

"They love to make me sweat," McLeish admitted after an own goal from Scott Severin four minutes before half-time was all his players had to show from a game they dominated. "We created a lot of chances but we don't finish teams off and at 1-0 it is always dangerous, although I thought that was the best we have played since we returned from the mid-winter break."

Rangers played some decent football and had Claudio Caniggia, Lorenzo Amoruso, Kevin Muscat, Barry Ferguson or Michael Mols taken their chances, the scoreline would have been more emphatic. As it was, they had to rely on a Amoruso's last-ditch block of Mark de Vries' shot two minutes into injury time to claim their victory.

Peter Lovenkrands, the Rangers winger who returned from injury as a substitute, admitted his team need to make sure of their victories earlier. Even so, he threw down a challenge to Celtic. "This is a real test for you now," he said. "Let's see how you handle it."

Even though Severin was unlucky to glance Mikel Arteta's vicious free-kick past his own goalkeeper, Hearts could have few complaints about the result. "We weren't scintillating," conceded their manager Craig Levein. "Yet we had a few decent spells and in the end it needed a great bit of defending to deny us a point. We competed well, as you have to do at places like Ibrox."

They competed so well, in fact, they had six men- Alan Maybury, Stéphane Mahe, Andy Webster, Neil McFarlane, Steven Pressley and De Vries - booked, and Levein had a word with the referee, John Underhill, about it afterwards.

It was left to Maybury to sum up an age-old problem which many teams suffer from when facing the Old Firm. "We need more composure and self-belief when we go to somewhere like Ibrox," he said.

One of the teams to have displayed those qualities this season has been Motherwell, but their Fir Park pitch was deemed unplayable and Celtic now face a fraught couple of months during which they will have to fit the rearranged match in around Uefa and Scottish Cup ties, not to mention the CIS final.

There were calls for better pitch protection as the only other game to survive the elements was at Easter Road, where Hibernian lost 3-1 to Dunfermline. Gary Mason put the visitors ahead, Gary O'Connor equalised, and although Ged Brannan was sent off, two goals from Stevie Crawford secured the points.


Taken from the Guardian/Observer