IN January 1997, a coat of paint separated Rangers and Celtic halfway through a season in which history would be made.
Rangers were almost there in their quest to equal nine in a row. They were a stronger team than their old friends, although not by much, and certainly nothing was certain. There were serious players on both sides.
A couple of days before the New Year derby, which I’m sure you remember was at Ibrox, a few Rangers players went down with a virus. One of them was a recent signing called Eric Bo Anderson who had started his career in Glasgow by scoring goals for fun.
Smith asked his new start striker how he was feeling. “Gaffer, I have a cough and my chest is sore,” I’m reliably told what more or less the reply.
Ally McCoist was also ill. His take on his fitness was this: “I’m f***** but I’m playing.”
Bo Anderson did recover and came off the bench to score twice and Rangers won 3-1. The ninth league championship was sealed that very night.
That was more about Smith than the players involved. He had a way of staring at someone who was struggling a bit and somehow convincing his man that he was actually okay to play.
I thought of this yesterday in the media room inside Ibrox when Steven Gerrard, picking his words carefully, essentially said that any Rangers player worthy of the name would want to play Celtic on Saturday even if they weren’t 100 per cent fit.
Gerrard himself did it often enough. Time and again he would defy medical opinion because captaining Liverpool was far more important than a slightly sore groin. A proper bloke.
Of course, players do get hurt which makes it impossible for them to play. However, what Gerrard wants is the likes of McCoist, Richard Gough and John Brown who could win Old Firm games while running on one leg.
Gough was incredible. There were so many big games he played in which in all honesty he should have been home on the couch. But you don’t become one of the greatest Rangers players by succumbing to a bruise of two.
Gerrard is learning his trade at a huge institution which is not without its problems. No1 being Celtic are streets ahead of them, I would still say, and could well in a third treble and soon enough ten in a row.
That’s not the current Rangers manager’s fault, of course, but the unavoidable truth is that Rangers need to win leagues and cups. It’s what they do and but even Smith would struggle to match Celtic and a few others given what he would have to work with.
But what the current Rangers manager does know is what makes a footballer, given he was fairly decent at the old midfield lark.
My feeling is that Gerrard knew what he was walking into, had at least an inkling about the challenges which lay ahead, and how he wanted his team to be.
He wants to see attacking football played by real men – a phrase Gerrard has mentioned a few times - who are always ready to play no matter how they are feeling. Guys who smash through bricks walls be it Hamilton or Celtic, and they can handle what comes with wearing that jersey.
Does he have enough of them? No, and Gerrard himself has said as much.
Celtic will win the league if they win at Ibrox, I think they will by a couple of goals. This Rangers need team need to play like men because their careers at the club could well be defined by this game.
Brendan Rodgers has gone 12 Old Firm games with ten wins and two draws. Some of them will go down in Celtic history. Too often it has been too easy for them.
Some signings have worked out, others not so much. A few have been utter flops. That does happen at every single club. I read a piece just the other day which said Real Madrid’s transfer policy is rank rotten.
But there are a few there the manager clearly believes are not cut from his cloth in the sense they don’t realise that to do well in football, as he did to put it mildly, you have to give your all and then some. A slightly sore calf should not be an issue.
If only Gerrard could call on Bomber Brown who would play after being declared medically dead. He was a real man.
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