Spectacular can wait (Jambos … 0 GERS … 1)

Think of your favourite album or albums. Okay - yeah - you might be dead against his current cult of “listing” everything in any way enjoyable. Fair enough. I can appreciate that. It get’s a bit much even for an anally-retentive bus-spotter like myself - “100 greatest movies”, “100 greatest number 1s”,”100 greatest albums”,”100 greatest sex scenes”, “100 greatest comedians”, “100 greatest goals scored against Man United”,”100 greatest soap baddies”, “100 greatest epidemics”, “100 greatest mass murderers”, “100 greatest list shows”, “100 greatest excuses for TV companies to make you feel duty bound to watch half the cheap shit/classics they’re showing on their newly-free-to-view movie channel”. Channel 4’s been the most prolific on this front but Channel 5 seems to be the worst. Most of the time it’s actually a panel of critics who decide on the greatest century of instances of whatever category and “we”, the public, simply put them into order via their self-serving company website - and, every time, you get 2,000 Beatles or Star Wars fans hogging the channel 4 website and the rest of the votes are cast by one guy in Ashton-Under-lyme whose having a break between wank-sites. Then they put the findings into a six-hour, commercials-riddled TV marathon - sometimes shown over two nights. The subsequent “definitive all-time list” show consist of playing some z-list personality a clip from a movie/soap opera/football match/advert/Morecombe and Wise sketch and then asking them to paraphrase it with a tone of familiarity clearly belying the fact they’ve only seen this piece of film once in their entire life - and that was ten seconds before they started talking about it on camera. One day their gonnae get caught out, the producers of these programmes; one day Emma B or Peter Kay’s gonnae say “heeh-heeh-heeh - yeah - oh, I remember it so well - the whole family were WETTING themselves when we watched Mr Zapruder’s video for the first time. Never laughed so much in my life! It was a great night round the box. I mean, remember when the bloke’s head got blown off (ho-ho-ho!) and then - oh this bit was SO funny - and then there was his wife tryin to stuff his brains back into the huge gaping hole in his skull (ho-ho-hee-hee! - PRICELESS!! I mean, she was like THIS [imitates First Lady scrambling about the back of the presidential car, vainly retrieving brain matter] … what WAS she on??!!”

I HATE LISTS PROGRAMMES!! Hate them. So, erm - yeah - erm - I’m sorry - sorry I asked you to think about your favourite album or albums …

But, DESPITE the mawkish vacuousness of such trivial completist shite, you’ve already been thinking about your favourite albums, haven’t you??!! Even if you haven’t gone to the worrying extent of actually putting them into a personal order of merit, you can’t really help a few good LPs springing to mind. As soon as I mentioned the word “albums” I was instantly hearing the legendary tracks from Fran n’ Anna’s “Appetite for Shortbread” coruscating through my brain cells. Tis only natural. You’ve enjoyed music, that music comes back to you when asked to name yer favs. More to the point, if you think long enough, you can probably narrow each album down to your favourite song, your preferred track thereon. Think of that fav song, listen to it enough, and you can probably hone in on a single note change, a shift of key which seals this song for you - the melodious moment which sends shivers down your spine, which creates the indellible prick in your emotional wall. The moment you “connect”.

This Rangers win today was no signature song, no seminal track. If this season is an album, it’s more likely to be Kid A than OK Computer, Generation Terrorists rather than The Holy Bible. But I sincerely hope that, in terms of Paul Le Geun’s time fronting The Sensational Ibrox Rangers Band, this Tynecastle victory was the tiny musical moment which first positively imprinted his works on our collective psyches.

What Radiohead do during the last three words of the line “I’d tell all my friends but they’d never believe me - they’d think that I’d I’d finally LOST IT COMPLETELY” is beyond me. I don’t have a single musical bone, treble-cleff or semi-quaver in my body. But I know it’s not major - it’s nothing THAT ingenious in itself. It’s the way it works with the lyrics and it’s the way Subterranean Homesick Alien works with the whole album which makes OK Computer and this partricular track so phenomenal, and so dear to me.

We’re only in second spot in the SPL now and we’re only one goal “clear” of Aberdeen. We’re just three points off being in the bottom six. It’s nothing in any way major for Rangers to win at Tynecastle, to win anywhere in Scotland, but, while everyone judges us by the St Johnstone debacle, we’ve subtley, almost imperceptibly, won two SPL games on the trot for the first time this season and we’ve moved ourselves into the minimum sphere of underachievement we could bare in order to improve long-term or to do well in Europe - or both.

Celtic? Our real, long-term contenders? Well, they’re currently enjoying the kind of blasting, sensational change of musical tone expounded by Axl and Slash when the line “MY HANDS ARE TIED” screams into the song Civil War. It’s a sure-fire winner, an automatic million-seller. Gold, platinum and silver albums all round. But Radiohead outlast Guns N’ Roses. The intellectual boys from Oxford are critically light years ahead of the junkie booze-bags from LA. Celtic are on the second season of Use Your Illusion - here’s hoping their hits soon dry up, and that we’re the ones to once again take centre stage.

On the surface of things, there’s a wee race going on for second place. Hibs have had a change of manager but they’ve been improving since the moment Mobray left. Really the Easter Road side, Kimarnock and Aberdeen have been enjoying a sensationally successful season so far. Rangers, and our opponents today, have been suffering all sorts of crises - for us still to be fighting for second when half of the fans at both Ibrox and Tynecastle are against their managers, boardroom and every team selection, shows why today’s result, if not the overall performance, is worth a second glance.

Hearts haven’t won in seven games. This, as I say, was our first instance of back-to-back SPL victories under PLG - these are the kinds of stats usually reserved for relegation candidates. That both clubs are still in contention for a Champions League qualifying spot despite such travails shows why Hearts and Rangers are the only real contest in the top three. We must win this wee battle before we can sort out the point-per-game Celtic are currently gaining on everyone at the top. We’ve now beaten Hearts home and away this season. Methinks we’re finally sorting out second spot - Wee Nach’s brilliant winner this avvo has attained it, now we must make a base camp, consolidate - thereafter we can look to regaining First spot.

The game itself was, hopefully, this season in miniature. We were far from convincing in spells but we rode the bad times out, knuckled down and eventually our desire and ability and belief in who we are resulted in the narrow accomplishment of what we needed rather than what we wanted.

We want to win the SPL title every season - absolutely. But this season sees us almost certainly having to relinquish that in an efort to reconstruct for the long-term. So achieving second spot is the minimum requirement. Playing a Hearts team without its captain, any kind of regular manager or the full backing of its owner, fans and half its own players, would usually result in a 3- or 4-goal win for The Teds. However, in our current state we just wanted the three points. Two-in-a-row is hardly sensational stuff for a club which once went an entire season without dropping a single point but, under PLG, this is our first dictionary use of the word “consistency”.

It was physical, dirty, petty and the ball spent a hell of a long time in the air when Hearts connected with it. But while others may slate Rangers for struggling under such conditions, the Bears have watched them succumbing to a lower Division team in far less pressing circumstance. We weren’t holding our breaths for any sensational football from The Gers today - we just wanted the win and, truth be told, Barry Ferguson led a slow, sure truning of the posession screw throughout the match. We won the argy-bargy battle first and although always internmittent, we played more and more on-the-deck football as the game wore on.

We began to play the ball fast and accurrate out of defence and through midfield. The move which led to a shy deep in Hearts territory just before Nacho’s goal, was one of our slickest of the season. Again we score a late winner and maybe the theory that the players’ extra fitness training wouldn’t kick in til November is coming true. For me, it’s in such grimy, dour games that true teams are forged. Clement, Ferguson and Adam appeared a more credible combo of dig, vision and flair. Kris and Dado fought hard - weren’t downbeat when Gorodn saved brilliantly after Prso’s superb cross was sensationally volleyed toward goal by Boyd. Alan Hutton continues to have his moments but Stevie Smith is relentless and Svensson and Hemdani coped well with the Jambos air raids.

Nacho, for me, was actually our worst player for most of the game. He should have been sent-off for a clear boot at the backside of one Hearts player after the ball had gone out. A missile from our crowd missed Craig Gordon - what a moronic act, especially when we might soon be trying to buy him! - But it says it all about the gravitas I’m imparting upon this victory that it was the Nachster himself, amongst all this frustration and rancour, this borderline self-destruction by him and one of our fans, who drove through and shot from the edge of the box to score with the aid of a slight deflection. Things got so bad on the playing and results fronts this month that we just wanted to see basic desire from the players. This match was so unfluid in footballing terms that the character of both sides was shown in much starker relief - it was all that was on display - and, finally, our belief and desire showed through.

Today won’t make my top 100 - even top 1000 Rangers performances - but if we build upon it properly, it could make my top TEN most CRUCIAL Rangers victories.

Okay - I’m off to celebrate by listening to my favourite Alexander Brothers Album. Crack open that shortbread, Jeannie - who cares if we’re working tomorrow! Let’s hear some of those SENSATIONAL accordion note changes …