Rangers win shows strength of Hearts

GLENN GIBBONS
AT TYNECASTLE

HEARTS 1 Bednar 14
RANGERS 0

IN THE prevailing climate, jokes invariably make themselves readily accessible. The thought occurs almost naturally, for example, that Rangers still have a chance of securing a place in Europe next season by finishing third in the league.

Following this latest put-down of the Ibrox side, however, Alex McLeish, his players and supporters are likely to be disconcertingly conscious of that old line about many a truth being spoken in jest.

If the visit of the resident champions to Tynecastle was widely touted as a test of Hearts' credibility as would-be usurpers, it was no less an examination of Rangers' own ability to hold on to their title.

In the pre-match concentration on whether or not George Burley's resurgent side would cope with their first confrontation with invaders from Glasgow, the fact that the latter had dropped eight points in defeats from Aberdeen and Hibs and a draw with Falkirk seemed to have been buried.

Set beside the Tynecastle team's perfect record of seven straight victories - their victims including the two who had beaten Rangers - there was clearly something illogical about making the visitors favourites.

That, though, is simply explained. Weight of money determines odds, and any bookmaker offering a generous price about either Old Firm side against any Scottish opposition would be knocked down in the rush to be accommodated, the resultant liabilities too heavy to be countenanced.

This is, of course, an exercise driven by habit and repute, as opposed to current form. Those who made an investment based on the hard evidence of performances and results, rather than the notional proposition that the Old Firm invariably triumph in so-called "crunch" matches were properly rewarded.

But the truest indication of the general mediocrity of McLeish's side through the past couple of months is that, a mere five weeks after winning the first Old Firm match of the season at Ibrox, they trail Celtic by six points.

That they are now 11 behind Hearts is largely attributable to the leaders' tenacity, resilience and character, as the collision between them was, overall, much too messy to have been won by other, more aesthetically pleasing qualities.

Paul Hartley was frequently an uplifting exception to the widespread lack of fluency and coherence in a game which featured an inordinate amount of interruptions for free kicks. It was a curiosity, too, in that there was no sense of mayhem, malice or delinquency about the players' comportment. In the main, the illegal challenges were the result of inefficiency.

Hartley's progress in the last year or so has been both impressive and unsuspected. Having looked the part for years while playing for other clubs, the Hearts midfielder's relative under-achievement had, nevertheless, made it easy to conclude that he was more appearance than substance.

A month off his 29th birthday, he has become the influential, international-standard player he has long threatened to be. His improvement, along with that of his fellow Scotland squaddies, Craig Gordon, Andy Webster and Steven Pressley has been as central to Hearts' re-emergence as the influx of foreign players and is a further tribute to the persuasive management of Burley.

Hartley, like Barry Ferguson of Rangers, was a composed, probing midfielder while those around him took the frenetic route. It was his wickedly-delivered corner kick from the left that allowed Roman Bednar to get ahead of the visiting defenders and to send a powerful header far to the left of Ronald Waterreus. Edgar Jankauskas, in attack, played like the experienced pro he is, often holding the ball in forward areas long enough to allow support to come from behind. If there was a fault to be picked, it would be the Lithuanian's over-emphasis on this tactic at times, when certain passes, especially from Hartley and Rudi Skacel, might have been more profitably exploited by a readiness to use them as a vehicle on which to spring into threatening areas.

But Jankauskas had an onerous task after the enforced removal of the injured Bednar - replaced by Stephen Simmons, a makeshift attacker - after only 27 minutes.

Rangers, too, had been unfortunate to lose Nacho Novo eight minutes earlier, his place taken by Francis Jeffers.

But when Takis Fyssas, replaced by Jamie McAllister, joined Bednar on the casualty list in the 33rd minute, there seemed little doubt that Hearts were more adversely affected by the changes.

McLeish made it a quartet of alterations by discarding the dangerously unreliable Julien Rodriguez after 35 minutes, replacing him with midfielder Thomas Buffel and reverting to a back four from a starting 3-5-2 formation which had left them, for most of the time, in disarray.

McLeish's gloom in the wake of this latest set-back was understandable and, although unwilling to savage his players in public and preferring one of those half-hearted attempts at finding positives, the Rangers manager is too astute not to recognise in private that his team's most notable achievement was their failure to present any kind of genuine threat.

Until the stoppage-time, net-bound ball from Jeffers that struck the arm of Robbie Neilson, Rangers supporters could reflect on an early header from Olivier Bernard, sliced wide, as the only moment in which they were excited by the possibility of a goal.

Claims that Rangers were ill-served by referee Kenny Clark lack substance. When Ferguson was booked for diving under a challenge from Hartley, nobody within earshot was heard to protest that his heel had been clipped. It was only when Hartley said afterwards that he had just caught the Ibrox captain that it became an issue.

The Jeffers-Neilson incident was clearly accidental, and Clark's decision not to give a penalty was at least debatable. What seemed beyond dispute was the two-handed push by Rodriguez on the back of Simmons, putting the substitute on the ground, in the first half that should have been penalised. That would have given the home side an outstanding opportunity to take a 2-0 lead.

Neither Burley nor McLeish, however, will allow such incidents to affect their judgments of their teams when reflecting on a potentially significant match. Nor should anyone else.

Taken from the Scotsman