Rangers fall flat amid tumult

Graham Clark at Tynecastle
Monday September 13, 2004
The Guardian

Among the peripheral issues at Tynecastle yesterday there was a football match, though the fact that Hearts and Rangers drew seemed almost insignificant.
Home fans launched thousands of black balloons, screamed abuse at their board of directors and continued to voice their anger after the game in protest at the sale of their ground to developers and the proposed move to Murrayfield.

The British National party decided to use the fixture for a recruitment drive and members of the Anti-Nazi League were also in attendance, presumably in response. There were even protests about the protests.

Maybe someone should have stepped back from it all and been more concerned about the state of the game for this was an appalling advertisement for Scottish football from two of the country's leading clubs.

The first half in particular was dreadful. The home side managed only one worthwhile attack when Stefan Klos did well to block Mark de Vries' close-range effort while the visitors threatened with a Paolo Vanoli shot well saved by Craig Gordon and a Nacho Novo header wide from a Chris Burke free-kick.

The second half was little better despite six changes. One substitute, Shota Arveladze, somehow headed a Burke cross wide from two yards out and Robbie Neilson nodded another from the winger over his own bar as Rangers dominated most of the play. Minutes from the end Paul Hartley had an incredible miss from even closer than Arveladze when he sent his pitiful attempt yards over the bar from virtually underneath it.

It was an immensly unsatisfactory affair that saw the referee Dougie McDonald book the Hearts trio Alan Maybury, Steven Pressley and Hartley together with the Rangers players Maurice Ross, Steven Thompson and Craig Moore.

However, the official missed a fracas at the end as players from both teams, and the rival managers Craig Levein and Alex McLeish, stepped in to sort out a melee following a late Neilson challenge on Jean-Alain Boumsong right on the whistle.

Neilson was eventually called in for a booking after the referee's assistant clarified matters to take the crime count to a not-so-magnificent seven.

That somehow summed up a day on which Rangers dropped to fourth, on eight points with Hearts - seven points behind the league leaders Celtic and, for that matter, one behind Aberdeen and Kilmarnock.

"I think I saw football break out on a couple of occasions," said the Hearts manager with heavy irony. "It wasn't great."

Levein also distanced himself from rumours linking him with Blackburn Rovers although there was, predictably, further speculation over McLeish's future.

The Ibrox manager, though, insisted: "I am positive, the spirit in the dressing room is good and the league is nowhere near over at this stage. I won't talk about my position other than to say that."

Taken from the Guardian/Observer