Rangers were utterly basic vs Hibs and Michael Beale’s side showed same failings as they did under Gio van Bronckhorst
THE monster banner unfurled across an entire stand.
The blue and white plastic ponchos placed painstakingly on every seat.
The flares ignited in unison, the flags waving as one.
If they gave out trophies for organising shows of support, the Broomloan end of Ibrox would have it on the mantlepiece already.
And if their team could organise a back four, the title race that matters might not be on its last legs before Christmas.
Yes, new boss Michael Beale saw his men do just enough to make sure Celtic’s lead can’t go into double figures just yet. Before the fightback that spared them a frosty send-off from their frozen fans, though, the fact is that they displayed all the same failings that earned his predecessor the sack.
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Those plastic ponchos might have been designed to spell out the giant letters UB in tribute to fans’ group the Union bears.
But they also screamed out a message about the kind of mistakes that haunted them for the umpteenth time this season.
Utterly Basic.
Everything they did wrong in that horrendous Champions League campaign, everything they were doing wrong in the run-up to the World Cup break, they did it again here.
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A bog-standard delivery from Joe Newell’s eight-minute corner. An obvious run from the equally-visible Ryan Porteous. And no blue shirts react, not one. No one follows the runner, no one blocks his path. No one jumps with him.
Beale might as well have put cones in the penalty box for all the good his players did. His shake of the head as the cameras panned in spoke volumes for his frustration at how cheap a way it had been to go behind.
By the time Hibs had scored their second, less than a minute after Fashion Sakala’s crisply-struck equaliser, he must have felt like tearing his hair out; the panicky slash upfield from James Tavernier, the flat-footedness as the ball was pinged back at them and Kevin Nisbet lashed the chance home.
Here was a striker playing his first game since February, yet it was centre-backs James Sands and John Lundstram who looked ring-rusty - and they weren’t the only ones as that first half went on, because all it took time out put them in trouble time and again was a long punt, a flick-on and a run in behind.
Again, utterly basic. Yet but for the outside of a post and Allan McGregor’s outstretched legs, it could have been 4-1 by the break and the gap to the top could have been 12 by mid-afternoon tomorrow.
There was nothing heroic in the fact that Rangers turned it out. It’s nearer the mark to suggest that the visitors simply got a nosebleed and reverted to type.
After all, before last night they’d lost six of their last seven to languish eighth in the table. Before last night, they hadn’t beaten Rangers in 16 league meetings. Yet there were spells in the first half when they were allowed to look like European contenders.
And the worry for everyone at Ibrox is that this was exactly what had happened when the teams met just over a year ago in the first game after Gio Van Bronckhorst took over. That day in last November, he sat in the Hampden main stand and watched the side he’d inherited from Steven Gerrard go 3-0 down in no time.
Difference is, of course, that there was no way back that day, while Beale was able to come away taking every possible positive from three points that brought them back to within six of the defending champions.
He surely won’t be kidding himself that they’re even close to making a proper scrap of it, though, because there was absolutely no sign here of all the energy and freedom and lack of a handbrake that he’d promised.
Yes, a win’s a win.
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But for most of this one, they were as sluggish as your granny after two helpings of turkey and half a bottle of Bailey’s.
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