St Mirren 0 - 0 Rangers: Rangers scrap to keep treble dream intact

Published on Sunday 7 February 2010 23:21

SOMETIMES the mark of winners can be evidenced in the moments they prove not to be. Rangers sustained their hopes of a treble at St Mirren Park on Saturday, and precious little else. The dreadfully uninspiring scoreless draw in their Active Nation Scottish Cup fifth-round tie was their ninth game in 2010. Across 90 minutes, they have produced a winning scoreline in only four of these.

It is the – ill-named – one-off occasions where the Ibrox men have tended to coast, or "produce scrappy football", as acknowledged afterwards by Lee McCulloch, given the captaincy in the absence of the suspended David Weir. And it is in the cup that such shortcomings need not ultimately prove damaging.

Being second best against St Mirren on Saturday, having to rely on two goal-line clearances from the returning Madjid Bougherra to avoid an upset, surely was no biggie. Is there anyone, probably including those whose lot is pitched in with the Paisley club, who believes Rangers won't come through the replay at Ibrox next week?

That replay route was precisely how they worked their way into the quarter-finals. Scrapping a draw away to Hamilton, they were held until extra time by the Lanarkshire side before prevailing. Job done, a phrase McCulloch uses often, in a gruff manner. Akin, indeed, to how Rangers have been performing their duties, in a gathering financial storm. "We don't talk about that. Everybody wants to bring success, and we know success brings money."

Of course, Rangers' stuttering since they were demolishing all before them in December cannot be set apart from the loss of Kris Boyd to a double hernia, Kenny Miller's flitting in-and-out, and the absence of Bougherra on Africa Cup of Nations duty.

And as significant as the result on Saturday may have been the re-establishing of the Boyd-Miller partnership for a final half hour; even if it was period during which Ibrox assistant Ally McCoist admitted they pair didn't create any more than the next-to-nothing of the toiling Kyle Lafferty and Steven Naismith they replaced.

"It is all coming together at the right time. It is good to have the big man (Bougherra] back; he'll come in as a new signing. It will be good to have Davie Weir back and Kenny and Boydy now have some game time after Boydy only trained for two days. And Mo Edu is not far away," McCulloch said of key players' return to a tightly knit 20-man pool, in which long-term absences of central performers should be keenly felt.

And yet, despite having to do without four figures central to their late 2009 purple patch – Miller, Boyd, Bougherra and DaMarcus Beasley – Rangers are effectively six points further in front in the league than six weeks ago, are through to the first domestic final following their Co-operative Insurance Cup semi-final victory over St Johnstone last week and still on course in the Scottish Cup. These facts may damn the rest of Scottish football, and in particularly a hapless Celtic, but they don't change them.

And even if the Ibrox men have been pretty rank in half their games since the turn of the year, they have not been without decent performers. McCulloch in particular is enjoying his best season at his boyhood club and relishing his role in the centre of the park, where he is proving he is more than a masher and basher.

"I'm happy this season to have had a run of games and play in a position I can influence the game now and again," he said. "Out wide, when we were playing different football, sometimes I was getting a little bit frustrated and felt I wasn't really contributing as much as I could, or should. It's good to get a different role in the team, different responsibility. I just try and go out and play my game, show people I can play."

Bougherra, meanwhile, appears to try to play in areas that it might not always be advisable to do. McCulloch called him that rarity, an "overlapping centre-half" and agreed it gave the club an extra dimension, and McCulloch, an extra responsibility as the person who covers the Algerian.

"He's got a trick, he's got pace, he can put in a good ball in the box," the Scot said. "He's been really good in that area, an overlapping centre-half that I don't think many teams have got. We've got to use it, and use it to our advantage. When he goes forward, I usually sit in there, till he eventually gets back. You need to shout, encourage him to get back."

Bougherra's marauding betrays a casual relationship to positional discipline that he might only get away with in Scotland. That is entirely in keeping with the charmed, but warranted, progress of the Ibrox men this season.