Socrates' Thursday night TV Review

IN THE BYGONE Days of Yore, so beloved of the Ibrox faithful, if you worked in Journalism at the creative end, 'Fleet Street' was your goal. If you had the ability and drive to get there, the world was your lobster. Back then, many of the top operators along the Street of Shame were displaced Scots, bringing the benefits of the exceptional Scottish education system to bear in educating and informing the natives and the world.

In the “Comic” section of the newspapers, the sports pages at the back, Scottish voices there were, but, the English writers, more-so when, as regularly happened for the first century of organised Football, Scotland were beating England, there arose the cult of the English getting their excuses in early.

Football, like most of the world, has changed, but, last after night's “Battle of Britain” between Rangers and Tottenham Hotspur showed one eternal fact, when the English team fails to win such an encounter – the English Press always has their excuses ready.

In reality, a meeting of the fifth-best team from a city state of 9 million people, currently sitting eleventh in a league with a value of £8 billion and the second-best team in a national league with a value of just over £300 million should only end one way.

Restrict your comparison to the two clubs involved and the difference is just as stark: Tottenham is valued at £2.6 billion, Rangers at £150 million. The result ought to be a comfortable win for the English side.

But, football is played on a pitch, not a balance sheet and, on the night, Rangtrs were the better side, who really ought to have won. However, as this blog has been pointing-out for ages, this is not a good Rangers squad. There are players wearing the famous jersey who are not Rangers class.

And, for all their huge transfer fees and the mega salaries they pick-up as players in the English Premiership, there were players on-show on Thursday night who are simply not Tottenham Class. There weren't Greaves, Blanchflower, Mackay, White, Hoddle, Ardiles or Bale-like figures in white on that pitch.

Those who were there, escaped with a draw and should be grateful; the best performance from a Spurs man on the night came from Glenn Hoddle, who, alongside the equally-excellent Ally McCoist, delivered a master-class in the art of the television colour commentator – they, alongside match caller Darren Fletcher, added to the entertainment value of the night.

The entire TNT team did well, a word too for Peter Crouch and Alan Hutton on the less-glamarous pitch-side gig.

I have thought this season, Rangers have played a lot better in Europe, where there is less expectation on them; they do not seem to be as tense as in domestic games, where there is pressure to keep winning and keep pressurising the other lot. But, they have set their benchmark this week, and they've got less than 72 hours in which to recover and redirect their focus on beating that other lot in the Premier Sports League Cup Final, at Hampden, on Sunday afternoon.

It's a big ask. However, while Celtic has 48 more hours of recovery time, on the evidence of the two European games this week, maybe Rangers are in a slightly-better place going into Sunday.

Which side settles first could prove crucial, but, it is already building-up to be yet another Old Firm Classic.

However, to return to Thursday Night. Last time these clubs crossed swords in Europe, back 60 years and 1 day ago, the football landscape was a lot different:

• All 22 players on the pitch were British

• Rangers fielded an all-Scottish line-up

• Tottenham fielded: five Englishmen, three Scots, two Welshmen and one Northern Irishman

On Thursday night, in a “Battle of Britain”, British players were in the minority, but it was still an old-fashioned “British” cup tie, more blood and thunder than guile and silky passing – and all the more-enjoyable for that. It was also, it has to be said, very-well managed by a referee and his team who had a great feel for the game on the night – the actions of the third team on the park is often overlooked in a general review of a match and Referee Sandro Scharär and his Swiss team on Thursday were excellent.

Just one thing, and it's a pet hate of mine about modern football. I bet there were more back passes in one half on Thursday night than in the two legged tie back in 1962. It does my head in to see a team, some 30 yards from the opposition goal, suddenly turn round and play the ball back to their own goalkeeper in an attempt to draw-out the opposition and create space.

If it was up to me, Football would join Basketball and insist, once you cross half-way with the ball, you cannot play it back into your own half. Such a law change would encourage individual skill, beating an opponent, and attacking play. But, I don't expect FIBA – the law-making body of FIFA, to advocate this change anytime soon.

If you want to know how well Rangers did on Thursday, by the way, reflect on this – The Online Guradian is not allowing btl comments on their report, always a sign of a bad night at the office for an English side against one of the Celtic Cousins.

IN CASE you thought I forgot, there was another Scottish club in European action on Thursday, with Hearts losing in Copenhagen in the Conference League.

This was a hard watch, I never at any time thought Hearts had a chance of winning. That said, the penalty they lost to was the sort of award I thought we only ever saw given to the home team at Ibrox or Celtic Park in a domestic Scottish game – a “genuine mistake” that was never a penalty in the history of football.

OK I have been hard on this Rangers squad this season, but, having watched Hearts a few times in Europe this season, I am convinced, pro-rata, theyt have wasted more money on badge-kissing third-rate imports than even Rangers.

The quicker we impose an “Eight Diddies Rule” and have Scottish footballers playing for Scottish clubs, the better for the game up here.

 

Socrates Gets All Nostalgic

A PARTIAL LINE from “The Celtic Song': “If you know their history” came to mind as I read the Online Guardian on Saturday morning. Barney Ronay one of their football writers was waxing lyrical about the sudden emergence of wide players able to dribble and run at defences at speed.

Young Master Ronay, of course, belongs to that school of football writers who thinks the game of Association Football was invented in 1992, with the establishment of the English Premiership. Nothing which happened in the game for the 128 years before that – England winning the World Cup in 1966, Celtic winning the European Cup a year later, Liverpool's dominance of Europe under Bob Paisley, seemingly as relevant to Ronay and Co as the Roman occupation of Britain, the Norman Invasion, The Wars of the Roses, The Jacobite Risings and The Hanoverian Succession.

I began with the Hoops, so I now return there. Ronay is probably unaware that Defcon 1 in the Celtic manual of how to get out of a bit of opposition pressure in a European game was: “Gie the ba' tae Jinky and let him take it for a walk.”

The rest of the team knew, if they got the ball to Jimmy Johnstone, he was more than capable of holding on to it for a couple of minutes, driving three or four opponents to dizzy uselessness, until one of them fouled him and Celtic could, with the free kick, move 50 yards upfield. If that failed, they could always play it out to the left and allow Bobby Lennox to out-pace most defenders in another downfield run.

Fast wingers, able to dribble at pace, have long been a staple of the British game: Sir Stanley Matthews and Sir Tom Finney from England, Gordon Smith, and Alan Morton from Scotland, Billy Bingham and George Best from Northern Ireland and Cliff Jones and Leighton James from Wales, to pick just a few random examples.

What, one wonders, would such brilliant players have been able to do on today's pristine pitches, with the lightweight balls and equipment enjoyed by today's so-called stars. Or, to turn it around, how would today's big names cope with a sodden wet leather Thomson T-Ball, on a virtual ploughed field such as the old Baseball Ground?

They are never going to commission a statue of Phil Foden emerging from a virtual lake with the ball, as with the famous “Splash” statue of Tom Finney.

Football folklore tells us, Sir Alf Ramsey adopted his 4-3-3 “Wingless Wonders” formation, which won England the World Cup in 1966, as a kickback for the horrible afternoons he experienced at the hands of such Scottish wing wizards as Barnsley's Johnny Kelly – a childhood hero of Sir Michael Parkinson – and Liverpool's Billy Liddell.

Of course, the key moment in England's win over West Germany came when Alan Ball went on an old-fashioned run down the right, before crossing for Roger Hunt to score that wrongly-allowed third goal.

That's the trouble with modern football, coaches seem to be forbidding wingers from doing wingers' things. When last did you see a winger drop the shouilder, go round the outside of the full-back, hit the by-line and cross? It's like a hurricane in Hertfordshire – it hardly ever happens. Today's wide men invariably are on the “wrong” side – left-footers down the right and vice versa, encouraged to cut in on their good foot at every opportunity.

Some players such as Arsenal's Bukayo Saka or Rangers' Vaclav Cerny do this really well, but, I would suggest, the occasional reversion to old-fashioned ways, by going round the outside, would make even these fine players better.

THIS WEEK'S big match in Scotland will be Thursday night's “Battle of Britain” between Rangers and Tottenham Hotspur in the Europa League. It's a big game all right, as these cross-border clashes always are, and it will be particularly important for the Spurs'Manager. Losing to “The Jocks” just might be the end for Ange in North London.

This clash got me remembering the two clubs' first meeting in Europe, in the old European Cup-Winners Cup, back in the early 1960s. I was at college in Glasgow at the time and the tickets went on sale in the legendary and much-missed St Vincent Street shop: “The Sportsman's Emporium”. I got off my bus into ther city at Waterloo Street Bus Station, at 8.45am, joined the rear of the queue, which was stretching half-way down the Central Station frontage of Hope Street, and, by 10.30am, I had my two tickets for the game.

In truth, the game was a bit of a “dead rubber” - that legendary Tottenham team of all the talents: Scotland goalkeeper Bill Brown, England centre-half Maurice Norman, one-third of maybe the best British half-back line of all time, along with Captain Danny Blachflower and oor ain Dave Mackay; there was no relief up front, with John “The Ghost” White, Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Smith and wonderful wingers Terry Medwin and Cliff Jones had thrashed Rangers 5-2 in the first leg at White Hart Lane.

The Rangers' team they thumped wasn't a bad outfit: Billy Ritchie; Bobby Shearer, Eric Caldow; Harold Davis, Ronnie McKinnon, Jim Baxter; Willie Henderson, Ian McMillan, Jimmy Millar, Ralph Brand and Davie Wilson.

Trailing 2-5 from the first leg, the second leg, for Rangers, was all about saving face. The game was called-off on the first due date, due to thick fog, but a week later, on 11 December, 1962, over 78,000 rolled into Ibrox, most hoping for a miracle.

That hope lasted a mere eight minutes, before Greaves made the aggregate score 6-2 to the visitors. That was the only goal of the first half. Ralph Brand equalised early in the second half, only for Smith to restore Tottenham's advantage on the night. Rangers weren't done, however and Davie Wilson scored a second equaliser. However, in the last minute, Smith scored again to give the visitors the victory and an 8-4 aggregate win.

The Press, as ever, went with the obvious and Smith's two goals as the highlight; but, for me, the big thing from the game was the way you hardly noticed John White, until he played the killer passes for two of the goals. His death, less than a year later, was a terrible blow to Scottish football.

Tottenham went on to win the competition that season. That was a very-special team. I don't know what will happen on Thursday, but one thing I do know, neither of the present-day squads from the two clubs has even a portion of the talent available to the two clubs 62 years ago.

Revenge - A Dish Best Served Cold

THE LATE, GREAT HUGHIE TAYLOR'S piece on Rangers' first European campaign, in his Scottish Football Annual, number four I think, had a great deal to do with me wanting to become a Sports Writer. Kilmarnock's finest's tale of how the Fans With Typewriters adjusted to this new world of European travel over three incident-filled games, really captured my imagination.

Little did I then know, for instance, that I would later be by-lined on the same page as Hughie, who I was pleased to call a friend and mentor, but, I too, would know the relief of having Tommy McGhee, name-checked as Hughie's copy-taker as he telephoned in his report from Nice, saving my arse in similar circumstances, some 30 years later, in the days before lap tops and the world-wide web.

These thoughts crossed my mind last night, as, Courtesy of TNT Sports, I watched Rangers crush Nice 4-1 in their latest Europa League game. Now, I cannot really comment on the relative merits of the Nice team of 1956 and the shower which Rangers took apart last week – after adopting that Ibrox classic: “The cry was no defenders”. I do however, in my mind, know that Niven; Shearer, Caldow; McColl, Young, Logie; Scott, Simpson, Murray, Baird, Hubbard, the first Rangers XI to venture into Europe, was a better team than the one which won so-easily on Thursday night.

Older Rangers fans still insist, their team was kicked off the park back in 1956 – Thursday night's win showed, Revenge truly is a dish best served cold.

Yes, it was a very-good win, but, they were playing nobody and probably left three or four goals out there. The squad which Philippe Clement has assmebled is probably better-suited to playing a counter-attacking “European” brand of football than it is the Charge of the Light Blue Brigade style demanded by their fans against the diddy teams they face in Scotland. There are still, however, several players in the present-day squad who are quite clearly Not Rangers Class.

AT LEAST Rangers won. Hearts were woeful in falling to Cercle Brugge in their Europa Conference League game. Right from the off, I could only ever see one result, a home win. Hearts have one or two reasonable players, but, as with the Ibrox outfit, they are giving a wage to several players who are clearly not Hearts class.

When I was young, the DC Thomson school of comics: Adventure, Hotspur, Rover and Wizard were print comics, you had to read the stories, rather than gaze at comic strips.

I remember one about an eccentric millionaire football club owner, who built his team by kidnapping good players then transferring their skills to unknowns, who would immediately become superstars for his team.

OK, very far-fetched pre-Marvel stuff, but, watching Lawrence Shankland in Brugge, I was wondering if maybe that's what has happened to him. Right now, the Hearts' Captain cannot even buy a goal and it's tragic to watch him struggle.

However, I am sure, once he does get one into the net, the curse will be lifted and the goals will flow again.

I MENTIONED this on Facebook on Wednesday night, but, no harm in rehashing it. Wining the Scottish Cup in 1987 got St Mirren into the following season's European Cup-Winners Cup, where they went out to “Belgian Minnows” Mechelen.

The Buddies were roundly criticised in Scotland for losing to such an apparently weak team. Except, Mechelen went all the way to the final, where they beat Ajax to lift the trophy. As my old mucker Campbell Money is still insisting – Mechelen were a very-good team, losing to them was no disgrace.

Mind you, regardless of the fact they have a habit of beating us at international level, while Mechelen thumping St Mirren is not the only instance of a Belgian club knocking a Scottish one out of Europe, we Scots still appear to think the Belgians are not as good as us. Well Club Brugge knocked that one on the head at Celtic Park on Wednesday night.

I thought they were the better team on the night, but, well done to Celtic for coming back to earn a draw.

IT IS ONE THING to beat a virtual reserve team in Europe in midweek, quite another to limp past dire domestic opposition at the weekend, and that's the big problem facing this Rangers team at the moment. They really are a curate's egg of a team right now.

An old friend of mine, no longer with us, but happy to admit he was never more than a journeyman professional, even though he strutted his stuff in the old pre-Premiership English First Division, once told me this story.

He had been down South at a reunion of his old English side and the club's veteran kitman asked him: “What's gone wrong with Scottish football and Scottish footballers? You guys used to come down here, demanding the ball all the time in training and in games, influencing affairs, nowadays the Scots we get here don't appear to want the ball – they will run all day, but can no longer create.”

OK, there are gey few Scottish accents, or Scottish-reared players in the current Rangers team, but, otherwise, they exactly meet the critique of that old kit man. Yes, they generally pass the diddy teams off the park in domestic games, but, for me, a lot of the passing is a case of passing the buck.

Rangers have always had players who could play a killer pass; just from the guys I've seen: Jim Baxter (the best of them all), Ian McMillan, Bobby Russell, Ian Durrant, Derek Ferguson, Paul Gascoigne, to name but a few. None of the current lot comes remotely close to that level of invention.

And, at Perth, on Sunday, they were playing a St Johnstone team I would rate as no more than good Junior standard. I fear a long, hard winter for Ra Peepul. This league is now more than ever, Celtic's to lose.