Sports
IBROX a place of unending noise all night, fell silent five minutes from the end when Cyriel Dessers turned inside Archie Gray and looked to all the world like he was going to win it for Rangers.
In that split-second, the stadium held its breath. Suddenly, it was about as boisterous as a mouse tip-toeing around a library full of an order of silent monks.
Dessers did brilliantly, but not brilliantly enough. This city knows all about the goalkeeping excellence of Fraser Forster. His years at Celtic were full of stellar saves from some of the greats of Europe.
The Rangers striker is hardly one of those, but the save was valuable all the same.
Fair to say that a point, rather than the three they would have expected, didn’t do a whole lot to put smiles on Spurs’ faces, but the alternative would have been ghastly for the visitors, who probably got more than they deserved in the end.
‘Spurs like tourists lost in hostile city’
You have to imagine that Ange Postecoglou was in the ears of his Tottenham players all week, telling them of the dangers of Ibrox, warning them that there was a battle ahead.
For all his dominance as Celtic manager, Postecoglou won only one of four times in this place. He knew. His players? Not a clue.
They arrived like tourists lost in a hostile city. They gave the impression of a team that expected Rangers to swoon at the feet of a monied Premier League side.
Languid, lethargic, lazy in possession. And ransacked, constantly.
The terrific Nicolas Raskin mugged Rodrigo Bentancur early on and you took a note. Nice moment that got the crowd going, but could Rangers keep up that work rate and physicality? For how long could they impose their intensity?
Then Pedro Porro was done by Jefte and Raskin, again, brushed off Yves Bissouma. Spurs were nowhere near the pitch of it. They looked weak. Soft. Unprepared. Rangers looked ready.
Whatever Spurs thought Rangers were going to throw at them, aggression was guaranteed. Quality could be not be banked on – they had plenty of it as it turned out – but passion and heart absolutely could.
On the touchline, Postecoglou was going potty, somehow managing to gesticulate wildly in six different directions at the same time in the kind of fluid movement that was utterly beyond the players he was berating.
Ibrox rocked as the visitors toiled. Radu Dragusin passed one into touch. Timo Werner gave the ball away with a staggering consistency. Brennan Johnson was easily dispossessed, then started blowing as if already tired.
Barely half an hour had gone. Tottenham were in trouble.
Little moments had the home fans in raptures. James Maddison tried an outside of the right foot cross-field ball to Werner, but Vaclav Cerny intercepted with ease.
Paraphrasing and removing the expletives, the general reaction from Rangers people was: ‘Save the showboating for down south, son’.
Raskin and his band of marauders kept snapping, kept living in the face of their counterparts.
Werner was here in body but not in heart. He became a mistake machine in the face of Rangers pressure. Johnson, the same. Got it, got hustled off it, then got taken off, as did Werner.
‘This Rangers had not been seen for a while’
Kulusevski was the break-class–in-case-of-emergency replacement at the break and he delivered. But before he did, Rangers made them suffer a little more.
Two minutes into the new half, James Tavernier, the captain emerging from a grim patch of form, did outstandingly to run away from Johnson and curl one into the path of Igamane.
The striker, wholly unconvincing until recently, finished with aplomb. It was deserved. Rangers had the better of it on all fronts to that point and now they had the lead to show for it.
Maybe Spurs couldn’t believe what they were seeing. And maybe they weren’t alone. Rangers have been improving of late, but theirs has been a soft recovery.
The characters who were calling for the head of their manager, Philippe Clement, only a matter of weeks ago had been silenced, but it was an uneasy truce, always liable to flare up again when things go wrong.
This Rangers had not been seen for a while. Belligerent, but also good on the ball. Pacy, threatening, solid enough at the back even after they suffered the huge loss of their best defender, John Souttar, after little more than half an hour.
And this Ibrox was a force, too. Loud, deliriously happy, thunderously angry – an unsettling wall of noise.
All the while, Postecoglou waved and flapped and turned away in fury when one of his players – many of his players – went backwards.
What he had was a cavalry to call on. Kuluseveski was a game-changer. Dominic Solanke was a big presence, too, in the salvage job. They were both involved in the equaliser, Kulusevski finishing.
Postecoglou barely moved. Maybe his heart was singing. Maybe not.
It was frenetic and fractious in the 15 minutes that followed. Solanke came close, but Tavernier came up with a big defensive moment to deny him.
The Dessers chance was it. That was the moment, or could have been.
Forster got them out of jail, but Postecoglou’s trial goes on. One win in eight is an uncomfortable case for the defence.
For Rangers, a League Cup final to come at the weekend against Postecoglou’s old and firing team.
A few weeks back, that final looked like a bit of a formality for Celtic. Now? If Rangers can build on the best of this they’ll have something to say, for sure. –bbcsport
A.I
Dec. 13, 2024
Tags: Cyriel Dessers Ibrox
