Of Mice And Mince And Men

AS BIG TAM memorably said all those years ago:”You can never shay never” - but, at half-time in Wednesday night's game from Celtic Park, I reckoned there was a better than even chance that Celtic would fail to score. As it happened they didn't, but, courtesy of an own goal which I don't think even Ally McCoist, Gary Lineker or Alan Shearer would have had the gall to claim, they got the win on the night.

With Scottish referees, the game would have been overer by half time with Celtic 5-0 up, but, VAR and officiating standards are higher in Europe, hence their problems. It's not the first game I have seen whereby one side made and missed all the chances, and I did have a slight fear that Young Boys might get lucky and nick the win, but, Kasper Schmeichel justified his new contract and the Hoops roll on.

A win in their final league stages game, at Villa Park next week, will almost certainly put Celtic into the last 16 of the European Cup, anything else and they will need to negotiate the play-off round. A big obstacle in Birmingham might well be a fired-up Super John McGinn, the Villa skipper, who is battling to fight-off a hamstring injury so he can play against the team his grandfather was once Chairman off and which he has supported all his life.

John McGinn v Calum McGregor in midfield – that's a “haud me back” match-up for sure.

I HAVE TO admit, I've got a wee thing for bad movies; you know, the sort of film which has the critics screaming that you have to watch in, so you do, and 10 or 20 minutes in, you decide: “This is mince.”

That was my mind set as I readied myself for Thursday night's big feature – Manchester United v Rangrers in the Europa League. The Guardian has, in the past week, run a feature, the thrust of which was: “Is the current squad the worst-ever Manchester United team?” Naturally, this blatant clickbait worked, but, whatever your view, it has to be admitted – they are not a vintage Old Trafford outfit. That said, this blog's view of the current Rangrrs' squad is well known.

So, this game was always going to either be a classic, or, more-likely, a yawn festival.

Well, not perhaps a genuine classic, but certainly an entertaining match-up, won in the end by a touch of quality from probably the best player on the park. Over the piece, United deserved to win, if only as the better of two poor teams. I would like to think, given how well the youngsters he deployed off the bench coped with appearing at “The Theatre of Dreams”, Philippe Clement might be the happier of the two managers, but, the truth is, given a choice between trusting their home-grown kids, or buying more over-priced foreign shite, the High Heid Yins at Ibrox will still go for option 2.

I said, when the club was exiled to the lower reaches of Scottish Football, they ought to have gone with their best youngsters, retaining two or three experienced players to give them a lead; then, by the time they got back to the top flight, these kids would have grown-up, knowing what it meant to be a Rangers Player, but, that advice fell on deaf ears – a series of bad players and poor managers followed and they are still paying the price for this and are well behind Celtic.

At least, last night Jack Butland and Harry Maguire demonstrated why they are unlikely to be hearing from Herr Teuchel any time soon. Best bit of the entire TNT Sport overkill around the game – Ally McCoist's half hour sit down with Sir Alex Ferguson. Coisty is demonstrating that Lorraine Kelly doesn't have the East Kilbride monopoly on TV excellence, he's a natural.

Speaking of Sir Alex, received wisdom within football is that he was never more than: “A journeyman player.” Well, in the course of the McCoist interview, the graphics showed his games and goals statistics from hs several clubs. This sent me to Wikipedia after the transmission.

Okay, at times Wikipedia cannot and should not be trusted, however in the case of icons such as Ferguson, the stats are generally good and these showed, over his playing career, Fergie scored goals at the rate of 0.54 goals per game, better than the accepted 0.50 goals per game which has long been the benchmark for an international-class striker.

His highest scoring rates were during his time with Dunfermline Athletic (then regularly battling at the top of the Scottish game and competing in Europe) and during his short spell at Rangers – so you have to conclude, he was one of those players who played better with better players around him.

Yes, he had to wait until his 80^th birthday to be awarded the Scotland cap his endeavours on the 1967 World Tour earned him, but, the stsatistics show, he was a better player than perhaps given credit for. He was never given the chance to show what he could do against first tier opponents, but, if you leave aside the obvious one-cap outliers such as East Fife's Harry Morris and Charlie Fleming, then Fergie's 0.75 gpg in a Scotland shirt puts him right at the top of the post-World War II scoring averages, well ahead of several more-storied internationalists.