Oh, yes - that’s more like the thing

Engelbert Humperdinck. Oh yes. I’m gonnae start this one by mentioning Engelbert Humperdinck.

Not, you understand, the German who composed Hansel Und Gretel, the Opera - I’m being pretentious, yes, but I can’t take it that far - but the Leicester-born crooner and leather-faced schmaltz-meister responsible, most famously, for the lads-night-out classic Please Release Me.

What does the singer, original name Arnold George Dorsey, have to do with yesterday’s comprehensive doing of Hearts at Ibrox? If anything, Please Release Me makes most folk think of Stilian Petrov’s current dilemma at Parkheid. So why should we be quoting Englebert on Gers@OpenFootie when we should really be taking full crowing advantage of the 23 hours between the final whistles at Ibrox and Inverness’s Caledonian stadium to bask in our top-of-the-leagueness?

Well, you see, Englebert was being interviewed on the telly last night. The brilliant, amiable Mark Lawson - doing what Parkinson used to do in the seventies, before he dissapeared up his own charicature of his reputation - spent an hour gently quizzing the 70-year-old smoothie about all aspects of his public persona. I watched this fascinating interview some two or three hours after Robbie Nielsen’s dismissal down at the Broomloan Road end of The Palace confirmed we’d won our biggest game of the season so far and while I was still wondering about the reliability of my immediate thoughts on the game.

I was chuffed to bits, of course - most Bluenoses were well pleased with yesterday’s result - but, as I considered what words to slap onto this here website by way of a post-match reaction, it became clear that a lot of my enthusiasm for the result and a lot of my pre-match reservations may have been even more unreliable than usual. Just as I was wondering why I was so unsure of my own summarising, Englebert told Mark Lawson that he believed in ghosts, that he’d actually seen ghosts - that, more importantly, most people didn’t believe he’d seen ghosts.

Mark Lawson pushed him on the subject, clearly trying to elicit some sort of evidence of the hokum which permeates Californian celebrity lifestyles so thoroughly that even someone who began his career in the Working men’s clubs of the Midlands eventually falls victim to talking such twaddle. Englebert said he’d seen the ghost of Jane Mansfield walking around his former US home. The spirit of the buxom sex Godess had, claimed Gerry, been spoted all over the house and even perched on the end of his bed in the middle of the night.

Just as I was thinking “now, that’s MY kind of spook!”, Mark debated the reliability of Englebert’s premonitions by saying “Yes, but you bought the house knowing Jane Mansfield used to live there - you were probably projecting her image from your own thoughts!.”

And that’s when it hit me. Projection. THAT was what made me so instinctively unsure of my opinions on this weekend’s Rangers - Hearts clash. So much of what I think about this game is effected by what I EXPECT to happen this season that I can’t be sure I’m being completeley objective.

Okay, I’m not giving a court ruling here - I’m a card-carrying Bluenose and, as such, I’m entitled to rant and rave in a completely subjective manner about this or any other match featuring my team. But, really, we want to have some sort of reliable parameters within which to judge our team’s progress or otherwise. And I don’t know if I can do that. Not yet anyway. Because, like Big Bert Humpingdick, I’m projecting.

Projection number one is DADO PRSO.

I spent the whole week thinking that, perhaps, Dado may be left out of the team for this game - maybe consigned to a place on the bench. And yet the guy was Man of the Match, put in another heroic shift and was the pulsating heart-beat of this great Rangers win. How could I have thought he’d be anything other than a certain starter - especially when he’s made a habit of producing such superhuman displays in his two yars at The Brox?

Well, I was simply PROJECTING, in an Engelbert Humperdinck styleee. I KNOW Dado’s incapable of taking it easy in a game. I KNOW he played every game for Croatia in the World Cup finals and I KNOW he did so in searing hot temperatures, against quality teams and with the weight of his entire country — a VERY patriotic country - on his shoulders. This man SHOULD BE KNACKERED!

I also KNOW Dado’s suffering from an ongoing injury problem which is rumoured to be making this his last season at Ibrox. I know he’s packed it in for his country and I know that, basically, since he’s been at Rangers he’s run himself into the ground. Like Jane Mansfield having her head chopped off in a car crash, I thought I’d seen the very evidence of Dado’s demise. Absolutely no slight on the man himself - my only concern was that The Rangers support should always realise that any let-up in Dado’s committment would in itself be a testament to just how much he’d given us.

I projected that Dado Prso would struggle to start this game as Paul Le Guen looked to change things after two successive defeat-like draws.

And, PROJECTION NUMBER 2, I thought Dado would be benched because I thought I knew what Paul Le Guen wouls do. I assumed the wriggly, slippy, ball-on-the-deck style of Buffel would be more in keeping with a continetal manager’s game plan than Dado’s all-action, all over the pitch excesses. Both players had registered just one goal for us in the previous three games and I felt sure Le Gaffer would go for something more subtle because - hey - that’s what I think French managers will do. I PROJECTED this tactical change through my misguided opinions about Le Guen.

Luckily for me, Paul Le Guen isn’t even one millionth as clueless a tawt as me. Kris Boyd came into the starting line-up okay but not at the expense of Dado. Because Paul Le Guen knows that a great player is a great player and you use him every time you can and you give him every opportunity to deliver one last all-action performance of genius before he finally collapses into early retirement. Paul Le Guen doesn’t give a shit about style or reputations or what anyone thinks of him or his players; he’s just a bloody good manager who knows what’s best.

Dado was brilliant. He sat in behind Boyd and did Buffel’s supposed job better than the Belgian has ever done it. Our Croat hero was the central attacking pivot - he simply outpaced Neilsen into the box for our penalty in the opening seconds of the second half and he generally ran Hearts into the ground to such an extent that the ever-more fustrated Steven Pressley began thwacking his shoulder into Prso in total malevolance. Dado barged him back and let Pressley try to get himself sent off.

Neilssen was eventually sent off because he couldn’t handle yet another skinning from Lee Martin and Fryssas even push-cum-punched a ball boy as The Jambos lost it towards the end. (truth be told, he was the biggest bloody ball boy I’ve ever seen but he was still just a BOY! Hearts disgraced themselves.)

I thought I knew what Paul Le Guen would do but I know nothing. Lee Martin; everyone wants to project David Beckham’s qualities onto the young winger because he’s come from Old Trafford but I’ll project something different onto him: He’s more like Cristiano Ronaldo, the way he dribbles in tight spaces between two or three defenders. He’ll have trained more often with the Portugese than he did with the ex England captain. But Paul Le Guen doesn’t give a shit who he looks like he just knows the boy can keep the ball in dangerous areas and can get in a good cross - the best of which saw Kris Boyd bang in number two with a close-range header.

Boyd had already battered home the penalty for his first competitive goal of the season and so it was two goals from one start for the man who doesn’t need to project: He just says “I score goals” - and he did and he will and he does. I thought Le Guen wouldn’t fancy his comparative lack of mobility outside the box but - like I say - that’s me projecting my own thoughts and stereotypes and sheer fucking lack of football nous.

Our defence was shakey for the first twenty minutes or so. Bednar or Pospisil - we don’t look very happy with any kind of physical presence which means that the high ball into the box is a tactic which scares the hell out of us rather than making us laugh with impunity as it would a Sunday league defence but - hey! - wait a minute! - we kept our first clean sheet of the season yeserday and Hearts, the team which blew Celtic away a few weeks ago, had one meaningful attempt on our goal all game. Letizi saved it well. I’m projecting incorrectly again - because Phil Bardsley also played well in place of Hutton at right back. At one point in the second half there was another barging incident as Svensson and Pospisil had a go at each other. Bardsely, who looks like he could take the two of them, simply told Svensson to concentrate on the game rather than steamng in there and causing more aggro as many an aggressive, well-built youngster might.

The penalty was the most stonewall I’ve seen at brox since Dado himself handled the ball against Porto and the win was as comprehensive as any of us could have realistically hoped for. We go top of the league for a day anyway and I’m projecting that this is the start of the REAL Rangers renaissance under Paul le Guen. We’ve taken one of our main challengers and shaken them about like a dog with a rabbit in its jaws - but Alex McLeish presided over two home wins over Hearts last season and no-one ever projected a new level of competency under Eck.

We’re a long way from knowing how things will turn out this season - all we know is that yesterday was much more like what we want to see. Like the sight of Jane Mansfield sat on the end of your bed, yesterday’s preformance makes us all pleasantly optimistic about what’s about to unfold - and not a little excited.
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