Rangers 3 Celtic 1 Scottish Premier Division, Thursday 2 January 1997.
‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure, that just ain’t so.’ (Anon).
It certainly looks like something that Mark Twain would have said. That folksy charm belying a cold, cutting observation about human behaviour. The quote is attributed to him at the start of Adam McKay’s Oscar-winning drama The Big Short. Ironic, perhaps deliberately, that a movie about deception and misinformation should start with such a falsehood. There are no records of Twain saying anything of the sort but it doesn’t matter to the viewer, who can easily find a wry comfort in assuming that it is something that Twain would have surely quipped to someone at some point. It’s the sentiment that matters, not the facts.
Eventually, Scottish football historians will be able to establish the last time Rangers won an Old Firm game without decision-making by the match officials being reported as the deciding factor. It certainly wasn’t the New Year fixture of 1997, 25 years go to the day, just as the nine-in-a-row epic was reaching its conclusion. With Rangers 2-1 ahead and only four minutes left on the clock, the ball was nodded down by Phil O’Donnell into the path of Jorge Cadete, who smashed it past a stationary Andy Goram. Sadly for him, Gordon McBride’s flag was already up for offside and the goal never stood. Cue hysteria. ‘WHY THE REFFIN HELL WAS THIS GOAL DISALLOWED’ bellowed The Scottish Sun the following morning, for some reason omitting the question mark. Phone-in shows were alive with complaints of bias, conscious or otherwise. Celtic had been denied a title because of this decision!
When this argument is brought up, as it regularly has been over the years, its advocates often choose to ignore the small problem of the big gap. Rangers went into this game 11 points ahead, although Celtic had two games in hand. Neither side were able to generate a large winning run during that pressure-cooker season.
Rangers managed seven wins in a row twice (once at the very start and then a winter stronghold, of which this game was part) and Celtic’s best effort was the six on the spin following this game, when the pressure had been somewhat lightened. Twice that season they were handed encouragement when Rangers dropped points before Celtic next played but they couldn’t capitalise on either occasion. It is a large assumption therefore that the games in hand would have been converted under that strain or that even if they were, that a five-point gap was manageable. Ultimately, Celtic came to Ibrox that night needing to win. A draw wasn’t really good enough. Poor offside call or not, they needed more than a Cadete equaliser.
As is so often the case, these games are characterised more by the surrounding soap opera than the story of the match and how the result was ultimately achieved. Despite being close to the height of their riches (January 1997 saw Joe Lewis’ ENIC buy 25 per cent of the club for £40m) Rangers were severely under-strength for the third Old Firm game of the season. Richard Gough and Brian Laudrup were out and Paul Gascoigne, Andy Goram, David Robertson and Erik Bo Andersen made themselves available despite being laid low with the flu. Alan McLaren and Joachim Björklund returned to the heart of the defence but neither had played a lot of football in recent weeks. Ally McCoist would captain the side. Celtic were at full strength but handicapped themselves by keeping Pierre van Hooijdonk on the bench as his contract dispute rumbled on.
The opening exchanges produced chances at both ends; however, unusually for an Old Firm game, the tempo was slow, with players perhaps suffering from their winter ailments. Then there was a gear change in the ninth minute when Robertson was fouled by Jackie McNamara just over 30 yards from goal. As the home crowd chanted ‘Albertz! Albertz!’ Martin Tyler noted on commentary that he was getting a ‘genuine reputation as a set-piece specialist’. One could criticise the gap in the wall or Stewart Kerr’s positioning, but when a free-kick nearly touches 80mph and is dead on target for the inside of the side netting, there is little more to do than shower the taker with all the praise. ‘The Hammer has torn Celtic apart,’ Tyler exclaimed. Jörg Albertz would go on to score eight times against Celtic. He had set the tone of this game, and his Rangers career, in a thunderous fashion.
The game livened up as the pace increased. Fouls mounted which meant both sides could work each other from set-pieces, Goram and McCoist blocking efforts from Di Canio and Stubbs whilst Petric and Ian Ferguson went close at the other end. Goram also found the target when he landed a ball right on Paulo Di Canio following a break in play. This led to the Italian wanting a piece of every Rangers player on the park and a simmering feud was born that boiled over in the final game between the two in March.
Tommy Burns relented and brought on van Hooijdonk to replace Simon Donnelly eight minutes into the second half and the impact was almost immediate as he forced another incredible stop from Goram to add to what was becoming a personal duel between the two stretching back to November 1995. He was needed again to make an even better close-range save from David Hannah six minutes later. Rangers were wobbling. Both wing-backs were making unforced errors and a shattered Gascoigne was lost with the pace in midfield. Smith eventually made a change when he replaced him with Charlie Miller on 66 minutes, but it didn’t prevent the equaliser that all in the ground must have felt was becoming inevitable. Tom Boyd was able to run freely at the Rangers defence, Cadete and van Hooijdonk linked up nicely in the penalty area and Di Canio was left in space to fire home an effort that even Goram couldn’t do much about.
Many Rangers fans at that point in time would have taken a draw. It had been wave after wave of Celtic pressure and, even though Walter Smith had specialised in a ‘rope-a-dope’ approach to these fixtures, there was a significant lack of energy in the Rangers legs as the match wore on. The next ten minutes, however, perfectly encapsulated the major weakness in that Tommy Burns side. Celtic had most of the ball but, with Rangers reeling, couldn’t produce a single chance during that dominant period. Dangerous and threatening when chasing a lost cause. Nervous and impotent when the chance to cut down their nemesis was begging.
Smith moved and Burns reacted. Off came McCoist and Craig Moore, on entered Peter van Vossen and Erik Bo Andersen, whilst Celtic brought on the attack-minded Andreas Thom to replace Alan Stubbs. Yet again in this match, the impact of the substitutions didn’t take long in coming. The newly formed Celtic defence, which now included midfielder David Hannah, engaged in a game of head tennis on the edge of their own penalty area, and when McNamara couldn’t gain control from a weak Brian O’Neill header, Albertz could and he slid in Bo Anderson. The Dane had work to do but kept his cool perfectly with a first-time finish to put Rangers into the lead.
If it was another ‘cat and mouse’ special from Smith then it was an opportunistic one. This was Celtic’s own doing. They were in control of the game and responded to the Rangers substitutions by needlessly overloading in attack and sacrificing the shape when they needed it most. Cadete’s ‘goal’ three minutes later was another example of piercing the lines when there was nothing to lose. After Paul McStay blasted an effort so high over the bar that it would have cleared two sets of goals standing on top of one another, Rangers counter-attacked in a very controlled and familiar fashion. It was Bo Andersen again who would show a calmness in front of goal so out of place in the middle of the mayhem, but it had the stamp of Albertz all over it from his punishing run and then a perfect pass.
There was an outpouring at Ibrox. A draw would have given fans great confidence in getting over the line to the nine. A win felt like it was a certainty. Sitting behind me that evening was Kai Johansen, another Dane who had experienced the feeling of scoring a winner against Celtic. He said there and then that the league was over. No one near him was arguing. Walter Smith would never utter it publicly; however, his charge down the trackside perhaps spoke more truth.
Despite trying to get the game postponed due to the worsening flu crisis, Rangers travelled to Easter Road two days later and won 2-1 – further evidence of a side that could still fall back on a steely resolve when on the ropes. This was the ninth Old Firm game in succession without defeat. It wasn’t an accident, nor was it a conspiracy. Rangers generally had the correct shape, a game plan that was ideally suited for the opposition and players who would step up when the nettle needed to be grasped, whether they be Danish legends for life or just for one important night.
Celtic’s analysis of the match seemed to focus less on poor managerial decisions, psychological frailties or defensive mishaps and more on private investigations into the ticket history of officials. ‘… it’s what you know for sure, that just ain’t so.’ There were many perfect aphorisms accredited to Mark Twain without evidence of his authorship. Another one of those perhaps sums up this game, and the general narrative of the battle between the two sides during this period, better than any other.
History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.
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