Rangers 3 - 1 St Mirren: Smith rant takes shine off Rangers' polished display

Published on Sunday 7 March 2010 23:17

CRITICISING referees is self-defeating, so said Gordon Strachan last week of his old club Celtic's complaints about decisionmaking. Into that category can be placed Rangers manager Walter Smith's complaining about the complainers on Saturday night.

Until about an hour after his side had chalked up another victory in their inexorable march to a thumping title success, Smith went off on one – "That's a rant for you gentlemen," is how he concluded his lengthy moan about the moaners – referees would have been a subtext to the afternoon's events.

Certainly, they would have been given their place because of Gus MacPherson's legitimate anger over how Charlie Richmond handled David Weir tugging back Michael Higdon as he shot at Allan McGregor in the sixth minute. How he took no action against the Rangers captain for an offence that could only be categorised as denying a clear goalscoring opportunity was mystifying.

But the St Mirren manager is a known mumper and Rangers' display had sufficient admirable qualities, enough sprinklings of the magic dust only real champions can apply to performances, for their efforts to be the story of the day.

Indeed, but for Smith's scalding of the referee scalders, we might otherwise have been of a mind to muse on an altogether different matter. The one concerning just how much he could better his team's effectiveness as a fighting unit in the event of a bid being lodged to buy the club by Andrew Ellis and associates this week.

If, as has been speculated, the new owners would set aside between 5 million and 10m to invest in new players each season, improvement would seem an obvious follow on. But, as they showed in wiping out in a matter of two minutes the advantage St Mirren gained with a clever free-kick from Celtic's on-loan defender Graham Carey half an hour in, they have a strength of character and resolve that can't simply be bought. Smith has fashioned that through his remarkable management will – and the necessity of having to make do with the same core for two seasons.

Equally, simply in terms of points haul and games lost, Rangers are firmly on course to be the stand-out Scottish Premier League title winners of the past six years. They will be that if they win ten of their 12 remaining games, which would be in line with their recent form. If they win nine, they will be the first league victors to top 90 points since Strachan's first season of 2005-06. Of more immediate concern is the effect of the Lee McCulloch-double inspired victory over a Paisley side – the accurate long-ranger for the midfielder that put his team 2-1 up arriving only 40-odd seconds after the interval. It leaves the Ibrox side only seven victories away from securing a second straight title. As early as tomorrow night, in a re-arranged trip to Kilmarnock, they could claim the first of these.

Smith might have been better talking that up than giving the infernal obsession with referees a new front. It is inarguable that Rangers have had a good run this season when it comes to being on the good end of bad calls. Smith practically revealed as much when, in stating errors even themselves out after Motherwell had a goal wrongly given offside against the Ibrox men, had to scroll back to a poor offside call Kris Boyd was the victim of 15 months earlier to illustrate his point. Given that context, his rant could seem a bit rich.

"It's becoming the referees who are influencing games," he said. "It should be players and managers that influence games and the better the job we do at it, the better our teams do.

"I moan at referees' decisions but it's reaching a ridiculous proportion and it's not giving the referees the proper opportunity to do their job.

"Everybody wants people to get ordered off and everybody wants penalties against us and everybody wants everything against us at the present moment. I don't know what road we're going down in that respect. We seem to be reaching a ridiculous stage where refereeing decisions are actually becoming far more important than the game itself.

"It's a game of football. Refereeing decisions – good, bad or indifferent – have been part of our football for a good number of years. When I started, Jim McLean, Alex Ferguson, Jock Stein all moaned about refereeing decisions. I moan about them. Everybody moans about them. But now, in Scotland, they seem to be going into an area that's taking far greater significance than what they are. Your team's got to be good enough to overcome them."

Referees have had a poor season. But their lowly standards have merely been in keeping with the lowly standards of the players and the football in Scotland's top flight. And many in the game, Smith included, are perfectly happy to return to this theme time and again.

Where Smith is entitled to be frustrated is that there may be a temptation to conflate Rangers' luck on the officiating front with their unassailable status in the championship. Rangers have proved the strongest, most durable team in the set-up. With their December flurry, they proved the most swashbuckling team in the league. Neither of these elements has been determined by favourable decisions.