GGLASGOW RANGERS: THE WORST OF BRITISH By James Forrest

Main Forum Description
jimbob
Posts: 0
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:47 pm
Contact:

GGLASGOW RANGERS: THE WORST OF BRITISH By James Forrest

Postby jimbob » Sun Dec 13, 2009 7:05 pm

Whenever Rangers play in Europe, I have a tendency to worry. I worry that my city and my country will be shamed by their appalling travelling support, and I’m sadly often proved right. I worry that they will do something unreal, and grind out results against good sides. A few years ago they went to Lyon and did something most of Europe’s top clubs would have struggled to do, and they won 3-0. It was a Champions League game, one I watched through closed fingers, one that made us look bad, because in all of our European travels getting a win – far less one as impressive as that – is something we have still yet to manage. And so I worry.

In one sense, I really don’t know why I bother.

As we know from scattered press reports, their fans performed their usual service to the good name of Scotland abroad, by behaving like louts and thugs, as they trashed a bar in Seville and then blamed the police. 2000 of their fans made that journey – one 40th the number we took to the same city for our UEFA Cup Final – and they managed to cause offense and trouble on a grand scale, proving, again, that you really can’t take them anywhere. I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but for the first time in a long time I was happy that this bunch of yahoo’s don’t regard themselves as Scottish, but as British, because it makes the rest of us look less bad.

Their pride at being British makes the chiefs of the EPL giants cringe. As a Scottish club, we don’t draw the same attention to ourselves as they do, and so our failures aren’t as keenly felt by those who guard the national reputation with pride. Rangers, though, regard themselves as a cut-above, and as some kind of standard bearers for the Union Jack.

Of all the clubs to carry that flag into battle on continental soil, they are unique in that they sing about the Queen. God Save Her, they sing, with lust usually only reserved for the English National Anthem. They’ve been known to sing “You Can Stick The Tartan Army Up Your Arse”, to consider any overt manifestation of Scottishness as something foreign and wrong, and they sing Rule Britannia with gusto which suggests they believe in every single word. Rangers are uber-British; they are the perfect expression of the unionist sentiment. That’s why it was no surprise to see Jim Murphy speak out on their behalf when the Lloyds story broke, although he’s a die-hard Celtic man. As political toady’s go, they don’t come much worse than Jim Murphy and as the Labour Party embraces the union ever more tightly, to stave off the SNP, it was only natural they should dispatch their chief boot-licker to bang the drum for Scotland’s ultimate expression of the same. Rangers, after all, are the only club on the whole of these islands to have held a “Britishness” day .... at a time when every other side in the land strives to be cosmopolitan and embrace the tides of an ever-changing world. At a time when they need all the help they can get, when they should be reaching out, Rangers choose not to. They are a strange lot.

What a shame for all concerned then that they are seen as something of a joke down south, where they are unwanted, unloved and seen as a pack of slavering hooligans off the field and a veritable pygmy on it. Manchester made their reputation, in more ways than one, and it will stay with them for years. That’s because of their supporters, and the whole culture of hate in which their entire club is steeped.

It’s amongst the arrogant and elitist English media where the real disdain is to be found, and that’s for Rangers assertion that they are fit to class their footballing side in the same category as the pride of the EPL, and especially in Europe, where they really do regard themselves as the cream. The reason is simple. Rangers, far from being the “Best of British” are the opposite. The club which prides itself on carrying the Union Jack into battle actually has the worst Champions League Groups record of any side on these shores. This is not speculative, nor wishful thinking. It’s cold hard fact.

Rangers are Britain’s Champions League record-breakers.

For all the wrong reasons.

It’s here I wonder where my worrying comes from. For all the hype which surrounds them in the Scottish press whenever they step onto foreign soil, the reality is a little bit different, and the English media knows it even if their Scottish counterparts don’t. The English are proud of their own shining record, and so whenever and wherever Rangers fans travel, in their Union Jack attire, and sing their songs of Empire, reminding everyone that Liverpool, Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal represent more than just English football, everyone down there cringes in mortification.

Rangers have qualified nine times and played a total of 54 matches in the Champions’ League Group stages since the tournament switched to that format. They have won 11 of those games, drawn 20 and lost the remaining 23. In 36 games, over six qualifying periods, our own record is 13 wins, five draws and an inglorious 18 defeats. In other words, in every season we have been in the group stages we have lost 3 of the games .... a record we simply have to turn around. But that’s not the full story.

In those six attempts, we have three times won three matches out of the six, and taken nine points. Our lowest total, achieved last season, was a shocking five, and Hugh Keevins, on the night of our final game, against Villarreal, went to great pains to let everyone know that if we lost that game it would make us the British side who had secured the lowest points total for a Champions League campaign, with two points. Who held the record at the time for the lowest points total for a British team? Well, Hugh didn’t want to say it that night, but it was Rangers, with three points, which they had done not once but twice. On Wednesday night, in Seville, they blew that record, and a few others out of the water, when their one-nil defeat assured they finished the group with that two point total.

In their nine attempts at the Group Stages, Rangers highest points total is eight points, secured twice, the first of which was with 2 wins and four draws in the inaugural season. Rangers fans will point to the fact a win only secured two points that year, and they are right, but I’d point out that the tournament was far less demanding than it is at present, and so two points a win was probably about right. They did the same in 2001-2002, with two wins and two draws ..... but alas, they finished third that year.

In our six efforts at the Group Stages, we have secured nine points three times, by virtue of winning all of our home games against the likes of Juventus, Porto, AC Milan, Benfica, Lyon and Manchester Utd.

As I said though, this is about Rangers. This is about the club which regards itself the Best of British, when the Champions League record they hold is easily the worst. In their nine attempts at the tournament they have never managed more than two wins in a Group campaign, and the records just keep on coming for them.

On Wednesday night they achieved the lowest points total for a British side, with their lousy 2 point campaign, beating their own record of 3. Their one-nil defeat equalled one of their own Best of Worst records, in that they were the only British side to go through a group stages campaign without winning a single match. They’ve now done it twice.

The defeat made their goal difference minus 9, beating their own Best of Worst record of minus 8, which they accomplished twice in the cataclysmic seasons 95-96 and 96-97, campaigns, in which they set records with their three point totals.

Those weren’t the only British records set in those years. They accomplished great things in 95-96 when their 4-0 mauling at the hands of Juventus gave them the worst scoreline a British side has had to endure in the Groups. The 4-1 reversal at home to Juventus the same year held the record for worst home defeat for a British side, and gave them the worst aggregate scoreline, of 8-1, overall. Of course, the second worst individual beating in the Champions League Groups for a British side is that 4-1 scoreline, which Rangers have now achieved [I:187101aa]four times, [/I:187101aa]at the hands of Juventus, Ajax and this year against Unirea and Seville. Three of those defeats were at Fortress Ibrox, which brings me to another record ......

The worst home defeat record was matched in this year’s campaign, on two separate occasions, to Unirea and Seville, the first coming as a shock to everyone, the second only as a shock to Chick Young, who said at half time in that match, with the score nil-nil, that “Rangers are outplaying the Spanish side tonight ..... I said at the start they could take a draw .... now I believe they could take all three points .......”

Needless to say, they are the first British side to lose all three home matches in a Groups campaign, a record they can hold up alongside being the British side which had the worst campaign ever, when in 1996-97 they lost five out of six games, winning the other. No other British team can come anywhere near to a record like that. Indeed, in their nine attempts at the Groups, they have twice won no matches at all and three times won only once. That kind of form sets the record books ablaze.

Their home record this season has shattered any illusions they might have of being a top British club.

It was Benjamin Disraeli who talked about “lies, damned lies and statistics”, but there are facts that simply cannot be spun, no matter how much people might want to. Rangers worry me when they go to Europe, because I always fear that the luck they carry will take them somewhere they’re simply not meant to go, as it did two years ago in one of the most ludicrous marches to a European Final any of us has ever seen. The end result, and the shambles which followed, and which haunts them to this day, was a kind of divine karmic justice being handed down for the way in which they crawled towards the Battle of Manchester itself, but it haunts me anyway, as proof that with the right combination of moon and tide anything can, and does, happen in football.

In my centre of logic, however, deep in my brain, I know the bigger worry is what they do off the park, and the haunting fear I hold that their travelling circus will not seem quite so amusing to the Scottish media which defends it or the UEFA Committees which have failed to tackle it when these thugs in blue jerseys actually murder someone on their travels, as grows more likely the more they are allowed to get away with.

In one of the matches this season, their fans unfurled a banner which said “We are the Chosen People.” And I always thought it was the meek who would inherit the Earth. Who knew it would end up in the hands of fat, drunken, shaven headed scum instead? They are Rangers. Super Rangers. No-one likes them. They don’t care. They’re right on that score, anyway. They are the Worst of British in every way, shape and form.

Their off-field conduct is why we call them Scotland’s Shame, but if the day ever dawns – probably not for a long time – when they walk out onto the pitch with the Champions League anthem blaring in the background, to play a Group Stages match, let’s remember the English are embarrassed as well. Let’s remember that those stumbling, staggering yobs in Union Jacks who think they are the representatives of a greater whole, who think they are The Peepil, the ones who put the Best in British, don’t consider themselves as Scots anyway, and let’s be glad about that.

They are Simply the Best at being the worst. In that particular contest, they have no opposition at all.

irish eyes
Posts: 0
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 4:01 pm
Contact:

Re: GGLASGOW RANGERS: THE WORST OF BRITISH By James Forrest

Postby irish eyes » Mon Dec 14, 2009 6:14 pm

You know jimbob an article I read after their Seville trip said that the club (i believe it was martin bain) praised the fans for their good behaviour on their trip to Seville - isn't it very strange that the bar episode didn't get a mention in the paper I read. I guess it was "overlooked" somewhat.

jimbob
Posts: 0
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:47 pm
Contact:

Re: GGLASGOW RANGERS: THE WORST OF BRITISH By James Forrest

Postby jimbob » Tue Dec 15, 2009 4:34 pm

LOL :kiss::kiss::rotfl:

max
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2008 1:25 pm
Contact:

Re: GGLASGOW RANGERS: THE WORST OF BRITISH By James Forrest

Postby max » Thu Dec 17, 2009 1:00 pm

I believe the huns disgraceful behaviour in Seville was fully justified, as the huns took umbrage at a 52 year old "granny" being attacked (I believe she was a "granny"at 28!). It is underdstood she is the great great grand daughter of the 185 year old man who had to be saved from being beaten half to death by police and stewards by the heroic hun in Romania.

Yeah couldnae make it up.........well........?????:sidefrown:


Return to “Main Forum”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 31 guests