Leggoland on Rangers v Valencia

[ian1964 10,416]

THERE must have been long queues outside dentists after so many who are loathe to acknowledge anything good about Rangers were forced to pen their praise through clenched teeth.

 

There must also have been a few laptops taking a fair old battering from those scribes who were forced to finally admit that this Rangers side can compete with the best.

 

In doing so, Rangers restored some of Scotland's tattered pride in the wake of the way the Scotland manager has gone about things with the national team...something which does not suit the agenda of some in the press pack.

 

But Rangers have shown Scottish football is not as bad as some doomsayers would have us all believe. And I must admit that at club level, I have come close to believing in the myth of everyone being better than poor wee Scottish sides.

 

It was a statistic from Tuesday nights Champions League matches which gave me pause for thought. The result was, Ajax 2, Auxerre 1, and it was the first time a Dutch side had won a Champions League match for over two years.

 

That's not some wee country from Eastern Europe which only joined UEFA after the Iron Curtain was breached and the Berlin Wall tumbled.

 

That is Holland, whose national team were the World Cup runners up in the summer. The Champions League is indeed a demanding arena.

 

Maybe that put into some sort of context the statistics relating to Rangers which were dug up, and emptied like manure over their head in the build up to Bursaspor's visit to Glasgow three weeks ago.

 

But it is ever thus with Rangers. Praise is always grudging. Also qualifued and hedged. And if there is a statistic which can be manipulated to demean the Ibrox club then it is odds on to be published somewhere.

 

When Walter Smith conjured an tactic which wrong footed that most street savvy of gaffers, Sir Alex Ferguson, at Old Trafford, and Rangers held to a goalless draw a Manchester United team which contained England's captain, the Scottish skipper, English Player of the Year Wayne Rooney, the man who had held that title the previous season, Welsh wizard Ryan Giggs, plus countless other internationals from around the globe, the anti Ibrox mob chose to highlight those who were not playing rather than those who were.

 

Next came Busaspor, and the Guardian's Glendenning saying the 3-1 offered for the Turks to win was the best bet of the night.

 

There were many in the press pack who agreed and piled in. And lost their dough. Rangers employed the same formation as at Old Trafford, but in a different way, and won.

 

Afterwards we were told that Busaspor actually were not in fact very good after all. Mmmm

 

And so to Matchday Three and Valencia. Spain has the only league which is a serious rival to the Premiership, and Valencia led it for two months.

 

On Saturday they went to the Nou Camp and were ahead for a long time before finally being edged out 2-1 by Barcelona. There can be no debate about their pedigree.

 

And no debate either about the merit of the way Rangers performed ,and the claim that on another night at least one of the two chances missed by Kenny Miller, the brace squandered by Stevie Naismith and the one ballooned over by Ricky Foster, would have gone in.

 

On the other hand, Valencia, as anyone would expect of such a terrific team, had their moments, notably near the end when Allan McGregor saved magnificently after Maurice Edu's lapse of concentration.

 

The game was an epic. One of the best I have seen at Ibrox in half a century of watching European action there.

 

The previous night I was enthralled and engrossed as Real Madrid saw off AC Milan. It was a smashing match. Real were impressive, and as they get more used to that master tactician, Joe Mourinho, will get even better. What a joy it would be to see Walter Smith pit his wits against wee Jose.

 

Wednesday's encounter was even more entertaining, more absorbing and was played at a pace more like an old fashioned English cup tie than the cat and mouse stuff of the European stage.

 

Valencia, in the Spanish style, played many more passes and had a higher success rate with them than Rangers.

 

Rangers completed 269 passes, with a success rate of 67per cent against Valencia's success rate of 82per cent and 589 completed passes.

 

Many of Valencia's completed passes were made square in defence and in midfield were short, while Rangers, though never just hoofing it, employed the more direct approach, which remains a potent weapon for British teams when employed with the sort of intelligence Rangers showed.

 

Of course Rangers have been here before at the halfway stage of a Champions League group, with qualification a possibility, only for the backside to fall out of the Ibrox world. Three years ago is the most recent example.

 

Third spot and a place in the Europe League is surely a more realistic target, though what was once Mission Impossible is now within the realms of the possible - if still not probable.

 

At the outset of their campaign, I thought Rangers might be lucky to improve on the two points they managed last year, and even after a victory over Bursaspor added three to the one smuggled out of Old Trafford, my belief was that they may not pick up another.

 

Now, after three matches, the Scottish Champions have five points, and have proved Scottish football is not as bad as some would have us believe.

 

In the process, Rangers have also provided plenty of work for dentists, after so many of those who were forced to praise them did so through gritted teeth.

 

http://davidleggat-leggoland.blogspot.com/

[wabashcannonball 0]

Good bad or not as good is the fulcrum, for my part I do not believe that foreign teams are as good or super good as the media would have us believe, I backed my judgement with hard cash at the start of the CL, as some of you may remember. Our league while not the greatest still plays to the same rules as any other league, at the end of the day it is 11 on the field against 11, if we don't let the opposition play they don't play, but sometimes shit happens and sometimes it is all roses, rocket science it aint.

[Super_Ally 0]

Another enjoyable read from Leggat.

 

There have been very few of his articles I have not enjoyed because he is the only jourmowho doesn't make a career out of bashing us and that is probably why he is no longer in the printed press.

[Totti 0]

Good bad or not as good is the fulcrum, for my part I do not believe that foreign teams are as good or super good as the media would have us believe, I backed my judgement with hard cash at the start of the CL, as some of you may remember. Our league while not the greatest still plays to the same rules as any other league, at the end of the day it is 11 on the field against 11, if we don't let the opposition play they don't play, but sometimes shit happens and sometimes it is all roses, rocket science it aint.

Don't really get what you mean here. Foreign teams aren't as good as the media would have us believe? Such as?

[pete 2,499]

As I said in another thread before i read this one I watched Aberdeen v Hibs and to be honest apart from Rangers and Celtic I think the standard of the other games I have seen have been very poor. I honestly think that not many of the clubs in Scotland could hold there own in the Dutch Ere division.

 

Hard hat on!