SPL Saturday 29th August 2004

Celtic 1

Rangers 0

1:0 Thompson 85

Att: 58,935

MIB: Pooh Dallas

Celtic: Marshall Balde Varga McNamara Agathe Petrov Lennon Thompson Juninho Camara Hartson
subs
Wallace for Camara 64
Sylla for Hartson 84
Valgaeren for Juninho 88

Rangers: Stephan Klod, Fernando Erection, Jean Pierre Boom Bang, Gregory Foulall, Alan Mutton, Clog More, Alex Naegood, Draggin' Myarseabootthepitch, Dildo Rso, Shitey Arvaladze, Nacho Nogoals: subs Steven 'Geek' Thompson, Peter Lovencrap

With Juninho finally signed we went into this game nicely placed, but with Sutton out and our strike partnership still working itself out we made hard work out of this.

Camara was largely anonymous; his only real contributions were a horrendous short corner and a brilliant last-ditch tackle on Juninho, sliding in just as the wee Brazilian was about to pull the trigger. MON looked like he wanted to kill Camara at that moment.

Prior to the game the press were full of what Alex Rae would do to Celtic, although the one thing they didn't predict was that in his first 50/50 with Lennon Rae would not only fly through the air like a rag doll, but would pick up an injury so serious that he required pain killers at half time and would wind up being out for about six weeks.

The Cat in the Hat showed his tactical brilliance once again playing Rangers six foot Prso wide against Agathe and placing the midget Novo against Balde. Now that might work if the ball is played along the ground and Novo got in around Balde's feet, but happily they just punted high all day.

Craig Moore managed to stay on the pitch for 90 minutes, but no one seemed to know how, and just to round it all off for the Orcs Lovencrap came on for some high speed badge kissing (Juventus must be finalising that bid any day now).

The unfortunate thing was that as the game wore on we started to fall down to their level, our passing went to pot, we seemed to lack imagination and with Camara on the pitch we were basically playing with 10 men.

As a game of football this was a disaster, almost as bad as the last Old Firm game, which was only dragged from the mire by Sutton's glorious winner. It was another Englishman that won the day here, Alan Thompson firing in his seventh league goal against them (the record is 12, held by Tom McAdam, Henrik got 11). And what a goal it was, a cross from the right cleared only to Thompson who had time to take a touch before smashing it over the head of Klod. Fantastic and definitely worth waiting for.

MON has now won seven consecutive league Old Firm games, and the last seven Old firm games, the only reverse being the League Cup final when the linesman misread the offside rule to deny us the cup. Does this constitute a hoodoo over McLeish?