Rangers 3 - 0 St Johnstone: Wanted Boyd sets the pace

Published on Saturday 12 December 2009 20:16

RANGERS didn't mess about yesterday, as is their wont at Ibrox on SPL duty.

• On the button: Kris Boyd opened the scoring early on for Rangers. Photograph: Alan Harvey/SNS

And it was their mass producer of goals, Kris Boyd, who was quickest off the mark. Just as with St Mirren a month ago, the devourer of opponents in the lower half of the table had set his team on the way to three points while the referee's first whistle was still ringing in the ears.

Boyd was a bit slower on the uptake yesterday than he was at Paisley. After finding the net in 19 seconds then, he took all of half a minute here to make capital from cruddy defending and set his team on their way to a breeze of a win. Crucially, the three-point haul means Walter Smith's men will go back to the top of the SPL table if they beat Dundee United at Tannadice on Tuesday. They may by also-rans in Europe, may be on the run financially, but the champions still look capable of making the running in the defence of their SPL title.

Mostly because of Boyd, who took his tally for the season to 12 on a day he was linked with moves to Fenerbahce, Newcastle and Espanyol. Out of contract in the summer, Smith, in praising Boyd's appetite for plundering, reiterated that there would be no enforced sale of a player they could lose for nothing in five months.

In fact, he hinted Boyd's career at his beloved Ibrox may not be drawing to a close. Even though it seems unlikely his first-choice football home could come any way close to matching the wage offers he will surely receive. Never mind, too, that Lloyds bank would surely pressurise the club to cash in on Boyd if a big bid comes their way for him next month. Although, Boyd has form when it comes to resisting being forced out, as last year's aborted move to Birmingham showed.

"If I read this morning's paper he is going everywhere," Rangers manager Smith said after a thoroughly satisfying victory. "But we have not had anybody enquire for him and hopefully we will not lose him until he decides to go, which could be three years down the road, you never know."

It looked as if it could be really messy for a truly meek St Johnstone. A second for Boyd, from the penalty spot, only strengthened that impression. With so much being made of him being only seven short of Henrik Larsson's 158 SPL goals record, it was as if all players in the home ranks were fixated with setting him up for a hat-trick to edge him even closer to the Swede's tally. In good positions, and with team-mates better placed than Rangers' No.9, both Steven Davis and Kenny Miller took the Boyd option and ruined good opportunities.

It isn't Boyd fault, but the whole manufactured goals debate regarding Larsson is utter nonsense. In fewer seasons, and fewer league games than Boyd has played, Celtic's No.7 actually scored 174 times in the Scottish championship. It just so happened that in his first campaign, he played in the Scottish Football League's Premier Division. It must be said that this obsession with year zeroing Scottish league records round a breakaway of the top flight clubs – which is even more naked in England – does a disservice to the great history that has gone before. No-one would rush to claim that Celtic's three-in-a-row is an SPL record run of titles as that would sound ridiculous when only in the late 1990s Rangers completed nine-in-a-row. So why individual records should be the subject of such recall blindness is unfathomable.

Not that Boyd's scoring achievements are undermined by the clumsy attempts to elevate them. He does share one crucial quality with Larsson: like the Swede he is capable of winning titles for his club. His plundering in the second half of last season ultimately proved the difference between Rangers and Celtic and the almost dismissive manner he puts the weaker SPL defences to the sword.

Mind you, yesterday the Perth club were guilty of hari-kari. It was a quite appalling clearance from Graham Gartland, straight to the feet of DaMarcus Beasley, that allowed the American to feed Boyd. A neat turn from the striker and something of a scuffed shot was then enough to give the home side the perfect start. The imperfections of Derek McInnes's side were also to the fore in the penalty earned by the eager-to-please, and successful in that aim, Nacho Novo approaching the half hour mark. Firstly Steven Anderson was woefully short with a passback to his keeper. Then, with the Spaniard going away from goal in the area, Smith needlessly clipped him. Boyd drove the resultant penalty low to the keeper's left.

Novo then pounced after Smith parried a Kenny Miller effort to fire in his team's third six minutes into the second period and after that it could have been any number. St Johnstone, without the injured Collin Samuel, never carried a genuine threat. They were only a threat to themselves, their manager McInnes admitted. He described the defending for the first two goals as "indefensible" with the third goal "not much better". "We have to take pride in defending and it has to improve and quickly," said the St Johnstone manager. "We would have been punished but a lot of teams making the mistakes we did, not just Rangers."