SUGGESTING an Old Firm game might be a low-key affair is to become a hostage to all sorts of fortune. These games, while usually lacking in anything that resembles good football, rarely stint on passion, invective and commitment.
Nevertheless, the 2008 Just-After- Ne'er Day clash may be a little more subdued than normal. The death of Phil O'Donnell will cast a shadow over all Scottish football for a while yet, and you expect Wednesday's game to be an opportunity for Celtic fa
ns to remember one of their own, and for Rangers supporters to acknowledge a respected and honest opponent.
There is also the obvious consideration that neither side is at all fluent or powerful at present. In a sense this is the fault of the football calendar. To pull in the serious revenues that maintain their financial status on a lofty cloud far above the vulgar milling of their domestic rivals, Celtic and Rangers have to concentrate on European competition from September to December. This might not be deliberate policy, but it is inevitable that players who are looking forward to a game against Milan will find it difficult to concentrate on a tactical rundown on the strengths and weaknesses of a Gretna team.
The end effect is that, come December and January when the diet is strictly domestic, players take a while to work up an appetite for their Premier League mince and tatties.
This season, it has been interesting and encouraging to see other clubs have been ready to exploit this lack of focus. Going into Wednesday's game, Celtic have already dropped 17 points in the league and Rangers 13.
That can partly be explained by the improvement in the overall quality of the top division, but also by the relative ordinariness of the players now recruited by the Old Firm. In the not-too-distant past, the mere fielding of players of the calibre of Brian Laudrup, Paul Gascoigne or Henrik Larsson could secure three points for the Glasgow sides before they even needed to perform their party tricks. Now the Old Firm are substantially made up of players filched from domestic rivals. The likes of Kris Boyd, Scott McDonald, Kevin Thomson or Scott Brown are estimable players all, but they do not have the intimidating allure of the exotic. Motherwell and Kilmarnock defenders have played so many times against them in training they know exactly where they hate to be kicked.
Foreigners may be respected but they no longer carry an aura of invincibility. Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink is a big name only in the most prosaic sense. Gennaro Gattuso's Christmas spell on the Rangers training ground must have been a piquant reminder that the Ibrox roster no longer houses anyone of that charisma and stature.
It could be argued that both clubs have more cohesion, with a core of Scottish players lightly seasoned by a sprinkling of foreigners. Both put up eminently respectable showings in the Champions League in the autumn, with Celtic looking forward to a momentous encounter with Barcelona next year. It cannot be denied though that the teams rarely set the blood racing in the way a Larsson goal or a Gascoigne flick could.
In Gordon Strachan and Walter Smith, we see managers whose strong suit is pragmatism. You would look at both for a very long time before discerning any traces of quixotic romanticism. Smith hits 60 next February. As a Rangers fan from boyhood, you'd expect his feel for an Old Firm derby to run a little deeper in the blood than it might in the Edinburgh boy Strachan.
That said, he doesn't tend to send out his Rangers sides telling them to create havoc and let slip the dogs of war. His is a more tentative and studied approach, although his players occasionally forget it. Since he was carried back to Ibrox on clouds of glory at the start of last year, he has contested three Old Firm matches and won all of them.
Those obsessed by omens, hoodoos and superstition, i.e. most football supporters, will infer that Smith has some infernal hold over Celtic. The more rational, who accept the teams are pretty evenly matched, and neither of them possessed of a devastating match-winning individual, will suggest Smith has been statistically fortunate, and that anomaly should straighten itself out sooner rather than later.
If Smith wins again on Wednesday though, and puts Rangers in the title driving seat, even Strachan might start to believe in a hex.
The full article contains 765 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
