What, no boos?!

I didn’t even get out my seat when Ferguson put the ball in the back of the Copland Road net. He’d ran about five yards offside before the cross even came in. The biggest moment of excitement during the match came in the next five seconds as the volume of cheering all round me continued to rise and those who’d arisen continued to stand, clapping, cheering. I began to think maybe the ref had overruled the linesman. Charlie Richmond had had such a howler of a game til that 77th minute point it was perfectly plausible he’d fuck up just enough to award us a goal which clearly wasn’t.

But no. It was just a lot of wishful thinking by the Bears around me.

A wishful thinking which had begun with the most genuinely exciting moment of the whole day (unless, that is, I get a knock at the door in the few remaining hours before midnight and it’s Gerd Muller, back on the drink, saying “Big Man - Comen zie Hiere, bitte - we’ll hit ze Victoria’s - Ah huv zee Burds in ze taxi - Dat Kirstin Scott Thomas is pyoor dyin tae meet you and Winona Ryder is keepin a kebab warm for ye, bitte Danke, gesselschaft mit beschrankter haftung etc”) - the news that Hartley and Gordon had been dropped from the visiting first XI.

Hartley’s probably coming to Rangers. That’ll be useful - maybe more than useful. I hope to hell Gordon’s coming too - that’d maintain the line which includes Bobby Brown, Jerry Dawson, Chris Woods, Andy Goram and Stefan Klos. But, the only certain excitement was that two key Jambolinos weren’t playing. So, this would mean Rangers could definitely give them a battering and definitely secure that gloriously exciting second place in the SPL.

Fuck me. I really wasnae that excited at all today, was I? And I really wiznae that surprised when we effed up and coudldnae score against a fit, organised but hardly sensational Tynecastle side.

Our defence was great - yeah - as far as any defence which isnae tested can be declared great. We’ve now gone three straight games without conceding a goal and have bedded in a new veteran signing at centre half in the last two of those games. But it’s up front where we have the real problems. A new youth from a Danish side is training with us and Falkirk are holding out for half a million quid for Allan Gow. Hardly Gazza-esque signings but we need something new in an attacking sense because Kris Boyd hasn’t been doing it the last couple of games and Nacho spends so much time assisting the midfield and the defence he doesnae have a spare second to score a goal.

Och - Boyd will come good again. He’s one of those players who’ll “do nothing except score a hat-trick” and the Nine-In-A-Row years were pebble-dashed with draws against Hearts. There’s no real concern about our abaility to secure second spot n the SPL, even if Aberdeen did win at Love Street today. Admittedly, this is the kind of game we might have lost under Le Guen this season(although we did destroy Hearts the last time they came to Ibrox) and Walter, in finally overseeing the poor result you’d expect when there’s so much change going on, has avoided a truly disastrous result. The team were up for it, they were genuinely trying and looked as if they were being contained only by all-out defending and time-wasting by the visitors. It’s just that - well - it’s just that it’s all so boring. It’s all so “private function”. It’s all so fucking short sighted and cowardly that I just can’t stomach it.

Mainly because Barry Ferguson is having a ball.

I hate myself for it but there’s a festering resentment within me now. A guy I stick up for on all ocassions over the past two years and even when he was leaving us for Blackburn. A guy who always had my best wishes and genuine affection. And now - although Ill always applaud him on the pitch and always back Rangers players against the opposition - now I can’t really stand him because he represents our idiocy of all idiocies. Barry is happier than nayone that we’re playing it safe. Barry has shirked the challenge. I think he’s been given the run of Ibrox and, someone as short-sighted and intellectually thick as Barry should not be left in charge of the Rangers vision.

He’s a phenomenal player. He has more intellect in his boots than I’ll ever have in my noggin. He’s shouldered this side through some hard times - he’s given us some fantastic football memories. But he’s a player. He’s an ON-FIELD leader at most. Yet he’s been allowed to change the Rangers management and, in so doing, changed the entire direction and ethos of this club of ours - this club I was watching before he was even fucking born. We used to be all about discipline, unity, sorting shit out amongst ourselves and always trying to be the best. Now we’re just about getting ourselves into a context small enough to make us look like the best. It’s like me entering a short-story competition in a school for adult literacy - if you don’t win you look even more stupid.

If Rangers were going for the footballing equivelant of the booker prize, it’d be okay to draw with Hearts. But when you’ve decided to forfeit a complete modernising of teh club so it can compete in Europe as well as dominate the SPl - when you’ve foregone log-term goals and waider horizons you then MUST BEAT EVERYONE, ALWAYS IN THE PATHETIC LITTLE HOVEL WHICH IS THE SPL. If we’ve got rid of PLG because we can’t stand any dodgy results at home - we drew with St Mirren, Motherwell and Dundee United, we lost to Inverness, why weren’t there any boos at full-time today when we could only draw with a side which has just dropped its two best players??!! But Barry almost had his name sung today - by the folk at Ibrox who agree with him and wanted him to win his shwdown with the manager simply because he, like them, didnae like the fact we’d have to lose a few to win a lot.

Of course, it’s not Barry’s fault that we’re now wallowing in our own shite. It’s OUR fault. It’s the FANS’ fault. It’s the fault of people like me. Guys like me allow the neanderthal, disloyal, fly-by-night, tourists to rant and rave unintelligably after every minor set-back - in excatly the same way they go off on one when they get the wrong change in the pub or are asked to step away from the Nine Items or Less queue with their overflowing trolley. These guys don’t actually care about Rangers - these people WANT to be upset. Because being upset allows them be loud and being loud proves that they’re not gay like what they think they are in teh dead of night, alone in their beds, trying to get rid of that mental picture of the hunky little assistant manager at Asda who gently gripped their arm as they were escorted out the shop. But it’s my fault they’ve taken control. It’s my fault that Rangers are now, more than ever, about reducing our horizins so much that we don’t dare enter into any kind of ambition which may necessitate some hard times. We’d rather sit eating mars bars and coke on the sofa and die on our own with nobody caring than actually get out there and feel the burn and live, truly live in the big world.

They want a fucking trophy guaranteed with their season ticket, these idiots. That’s fine. But they dont care about the real value of the trophies they win. That’s not fine.

Me? I want THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE. I want RED, WHITE and BLUE ribbons on that EUROPEAN CUP! I want the best trophies available and, if I can’t get them I want to see Rangers doing everything they can to genuinely go for it anyway. And I don’t just expect that because I’ve paid my season ticket. I want that because I’ve GIVEN MY FUCKING FOOTBALL LIFE to this club. Who should have been in charge of the direction of our club? A guy with a defgree in economics, the ability to speak a foreign language, three Championnats as a manager and a European trophy to his name as a player - or a guy who found Blackburn too complicated?

Barry’s a great player. But even that now has been diluted by his desire to run everywhere and anywhere. “look at me - I can do whatever I want now - yipee - I’m free AND I’m still the boss!!”. He was fucking YARDS offside today and had all the time in the world to check his run and come back on, to actually TRY to win the game for us. But I now stongly suspect he thinks he can harangue the linesman and ref in the same way he did Le Guen - and get his own way. “You’d better pit yer flag doon linesman or ah’m gonnae phone up the Sun!”

There’s plenty “vital” stuff on the go at Ibrox right now: We MUST get that Champions League spot for the financial good of the team. We MUST see the team rebuild itself for next season lest we let the smellies win three titles on the bounce. There’s plenty common sense stuff happening - the tightening up at the back and the simple formations - all designed to stem the tide of ignorant venom from the stands. But, at the heart of it, is a surrender to the cult of personality.

So what the fuck is there happening which is actually “exciting”?!! We’re siging a lot of 34 and 36 year olds - Hartley’s gonnae feel like a fucking teenager if he ends up in that dressing room! The idea of REAL, WORTHWHILE rebuilding dissapeared up the swanee when PLG went off to Pareeee.

Personally, there was fuck-all to get motivated about today. There’s a young, shit-house built, shit-house thick arsehole who sits behind me - him and his gormless mate spent all of last season coming in their pants every time Lovenkrands scored - as if they were the only ones enjoying his goals - and slavering all over me as they lectured everyone else who’d dared slag Lovenkrands for his previous three years of ineptitude. They simultaneously subjected Ferguson to a barrage of abuse every time he breathed. This season they’ve started defending Alan Hutton against all and any kind of criticism and have targeted Charlie Adam for all their “see - why’s he noh gettin slagged??! he’s shite, ya cunts!” crapola. I never slag any player while I’m at the game. And I REALLY resent the notion that I’m someone who needs a lecture on loyalty from any cunt. I’m worried I will, at some point, turn round and punch fuck out this litte prat and his mate. And I’ll be arrested and I’ll have my season ticket taken off me. And it’ll actually be a subconscious surrendering of the faith - me looking for a way out until I can see a way out of this spiral of insularity for Rangers.

THAT, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, was my only excitement today - that tingling fear of where my own temper and dissilusionment might take me. And I won’t do anything. Anyone over five years old or three foot tall is automatically handier than me and I’d probably have a coronary if I attempted anything as energetic as assault.

When we had that chance early in the first half, with Sionko missing from five yards and paired it with the shot which came off their goalie and rebounded over the bar from Boyd three yards out, it was clear how this game was gonnae go. Long-term, I’m now waiting for Davd Murray to leave - I’m waiting to see who is gonane come in with the money and the know-how and the sheer balls to defy the short-term thinking, knee-jerkism amongst the loudest, most threatening bams in the Rangers support - the ones who always get on Setanta and Scotsport to tell it like it is,nae. We’ve screwed the life out Murray - he’s sick of it and I don’t blame him.

Right now, we have what we deserve.