Celtic 0 Rangers 1: The patched-up team that secured Nine-in-a-Row in Parkhead powderkeg

MUCH has been written in recent years, by Michael Cox, Jonathan Wilson and others, about the tactical changes that have shaped British football since 1992, the year that introduced the Premier League in England, the Champions League in Europe and, perhaps more importantly, the back pass law everywhere.

Although widely ridiculed today, getting the ball into ‘the mixer’ was once the prevalent school of footballing theory on these islands. As Cox described it in his book of the same name, it was the “simplest tactic in football: launch the ball into the penalty box, take advantage of the ensuing chaos, perhaps following a goalmouth scramble, and hope to pinch a scruffy goal.”

It is probably fair to assume that in Walter Smith’s preparation for the defining final Old Firm game of the 1996/97 season, there wasn’t much work done on the laptop. This was very much back to basics.

Although a perfectly fair observation, there are many reasons why this approach on this day should not be disparaged 25 years later. Firstly, the three other league games against Celtic, which were always going to be significant in the quest for this fabled ninth title in succession, Rangers won and they were great adverts for the game, especially the second match, as breathless a 90 minutes of football as you could ask for.

It was a familiar strategy of set pieces and lightning counters into the space that this Celtic side would always give up; however, the quality of its execution should be left in no doubt. Paul Gascoigne’s bursting run and finish in the opener and the free-kick from Jörg Albertz in January are evidence of that.

Secondly, needs must. As was becoming customary by that stage of the 1990s, the injury list was bigger than the number of fit players at the football club. Out of 58 first-team players, reserves and apprentices, 34 were injured.

Erik Bo Anderson, hero of the previous league match, had suffered a depressed fracture of the skull against Celtic in the Scottish Cup the previous week, Gordon Durie had appendicitis and Paul Gascoigne and David Robertson had longer-term issues, although Gascoigne sought to treat his by spending time on the lash with showbiz pals. McCoist and Gough were not fully fit, but Gough was desperate to start whilst McCoist took his place on the bench.

Perhaps most importantly was the loss of Andy Goram, the bane of Celtic’s existence for the last five seasons. With Theo Snelders not trusted to withstand the heat of this particular battle, Smith dipped into the market for a free replacement. In a time before transfer windows, in came Andy Dibble from Manchester City, a goalkeeper who had spent the vast majority of his nine years at Maine Road on loan somewhere else.

For a support growing more and more nervous, replacing their enemy’s Kryptonite with a Welsh keeper who hadn’t spent more than a full season at one club since the 80s didn’t necessarily help matters. It was no different for his new teammates who, after an early training session, joked that they thought it was Officer Dibble that had signed.

Smith’s other signing that week did provide fans and players alike with a tonic. On the Thursday morning, three days before the game, Mark Hateley had hung up on his agent more than once. In 2018, he told Heart & Hand: “I thought it was a wind-up.

“But it took me a nanosecond to agree to come back.”

Although 35-years-old and described by Hugh Keevins in The Scotsman on the day after the game as “more memorabilia than mobile”, he still had a presence that terrified the rest of Scottish football. He also wouldn’t be asked to drive the Celtic defence back with punishing runs as he used to do in his heyday. This was a clear sign of the game plan.

Football boiled down to its fundamental elements. This was an afternoon that would offer up less in the way of nuanced quality than some iterations of the famous Kirkwall Ba game, the annual Orcadian tradition where a scrum of men try and force a ball to the edge of either the town’s north and south boundaries.

Smith had good reason not to be confident in trying anything too complex. March had not been kind and Rangers were deep in a slump by the time this game came into view. Two points were dropped on the first day of the month when an early two-goal lead at Pittodrie had been cancelled out and a shocking 2-0 defeat at home to Dundee United followed the first loss to Celtic since May 1995, this time in the Scottish Cup quarter-final at Parkhead.

Returning there, just ten days later, with a lead of only five points - in this season of all seasons and without an away win in over a month - was only ever going to lead to one approach. There was simply too much at stake. A defeat would have brought the lead to within one more swing. Avoiding it would pretty much seal the championship. The performance of Celtic’s pre-match huddle was nothing new, but their encore after that cup win was not well-received by this Rangers squad. Motivation was not something Smith had to manufacture.

READ MORE: Rangers 2 Marseille 2: How the Champions League was born with Ibrox classic as its curtain raiser - Martyn Ramsay

The side that he managed to cobble together still retained the 3-5-2 shape, consistently in place since Gascoigne’s arrival in the summer of 1995. In front of Dibble was a three-man central defence of Gough, Joachim Björklund and Alan McLaren, with Alec Cleland and Jörg Albertz playing out at wing-back. Ian Durrant, Ian Ferguson and Craig Moore comprised the middle three, with Brian Laudrup playing off of Hateley’s knockdowns.

From almost the first kick of the ball, there was artillery fire aimed at the Englishman where, not for the first time in the afternoon, he bullied Malky Mackay in the process of challenging for it. The opening exchanges were brutal. Craig Moore and Peter Grant were booked for cynical fouls. The Rangers’ set-piece options were either a long ball for the Hateley battering ram or, as happened on three occasions, Albertz trying to re-create the magic of New Year but blasting straight at the Celtic wall instead.

The Celtic responses were limited to timid through balls for Cadete’s runs, to which Dibble was alert, or a Laurel and Hardy free-kick routine between Grant and Paulo Di Canio which led to another fine mess.

If one player wasn’t going to be dragged into this swamp then it was always likely to be Laudrup. He retained composure whenever Rangers broke and fed Durrant and Hateley on a few occasions, but they couldn’t reciprocate his coolness of thought. Although the word composure was far from the best way to describe Paolo Di Canio that afternoon, he did represent Celtic’s best way of breaking through.

With only six minutes left before half-time, he was taken out by Durrant on the edge of the box and rattled the crossbar from the resulting free-kick. The place seemed to shake as much as the woodwork did.

Iain McColl, one of the organisers of The Founder’s Trail - an interactive tour of the Rangers origin story - and who was sat far back in the bottom tier that day behind Dibble’s goal recalled: “I don’t know if it was just the angle of our seat but I thought that was in.

“They were getting close.”

With only a minute remaining of the first half, Rangers were seeing out the job as planned. Albertz had another free-kick deep inside his own half and launched it yet again upfield for his target. If Hateley did flick it on, it was with whatever hair was left on his head, but it still caused too much of a problem for Alan Stubbs to deal with.

His header was weak and Durrant took advantage of both that and Stewart Kerr ending up in no man’s land, as he managed to lob the ball over the Celtic goalkeeper and towards goal. It was Laudrup who got the final touch in a goal-line scramble with Mackay to complete a goal that was almost beneath him.

Brian Laudrup slides in to connect with Ian Durrant's lob to score for Rangers as Celtic goalkeeper Stewart Kerr looks on

Cox could have been thinking about that exact move when he succinctly encapsulated that nature of route-one football. Not that anyone in the Rangers end that day cared a jot. “It was sheer euphoria. It was the timing of the goal that made the difference,” said Iain.

“We drank a lot with Durrant and it felt so apt that he got the goal that could have sealed the ‘nine'. It wasn’t until we got back in the pub that we found out that it was credited to Laudrup!”

The image of Richard Gough breaking from a wall to charge down yet another indirect free kick in a dangerous area was all that remained from the first half and was a perfect encapsulation of the team’s attitude with their captain leading from the front. For all of Parkhead’s noise in the opening exchanges, there was a sombre reflection at the break now that they were a goal behind.

It wasn’t just the recent scar tissue that had been built up, Celtic fans would have to go back to 1983 to find the last time Rangers went ahead at Parkhead and lost (a record that would stand until 2008). Something inside was strongly telling them that they were finished.

When Hateley left Enrico Annoni on his back inside the first minute of the restart, it was clear that it would be more of the same, just with more space and tired limbs. Di Canio was the only Celtic player showing up, although his control was eroding fast. Caught by the Rangers offside trap so often, he was booked when he blew up at the linesman for a correct decision, but no second yellow was forthcoming when he did the same following the ball running out of play.

At the other end, it was Laudrup again who was looking the most threatening for Rangers, and one of his counterattacks on 65 minutes resulted in the game’s biggest flashpoint. After a sublime moment of control, Laudrup was free to run at the heart of the Celtic defence. After beating Mackay, he was brought down and then the Celtic defender appeared to stamp on him as he lay on the floor. Hateley, noticing the usually calm Laudrup’s rage, confronted the Celtic players, which now included Stewart Kerr, who had run 20 yards off his line just to get involved. Hateley was pushed by McNamara and then faced off to Kerr with his head leading the way. That was all referee Hugh Dallas needed to see and duly sent him off.

Hateley’s explanation years later that he was just keeping his chin tucked in to avoid being caught out isn’t quite in harmony with the television pictures. This incident, coming just three minutes after Richard Gough had been forced to admit defeat with injury and had come off for Charlie Miller, with Moore slipping back into defence, meant that Rangers had lost their two key warriors in this major battle. “The confidence at half-time had been lost, with Gough going off and now Hateley. You worried about momentum,” remembered Iain McColl.

READ MORE: Rangers 3-1 Celtic: Walter Smith's 'cat and mouse' 1997 New Year special that sealed Nine-in-a-Row

Hearts were pounding in the stadium, but, in hindsight, the fans needn’t have worried. Celtic were frozen by the fear that threatened to overwhelm them all season. When they did break the lines, such as the time Cadete lost McLaren in the box, Björklund’s pace was there to snuff the danger out.

When Mackay was finally sent off for a second booking after upending Laudrup, further wind was taken out of their sails. The best chance fell to Annoni after Dibble made his only mistake of the afternoon by not dealing with the cross ball, but his effort went tamely wide of the goal. When he committed arguably the worst foul of the match, on Laudrup late on, it sparked further scenes of pantomime aggression. When Di Canio, on a booking, confronted Ian Ferguson by gesturing that he would break his legs, Fergie suggested they wait until after the match. At the time of writing, he is still waiting.

The final whistle broke the tension and everyone knew that the league was over. There would be a match where that special title was confirmed but it would be all but ceremonial. This was the final step that needed to be taken and, regardless of the quality, it will never be forgotten.

In retrospect, there were elements throughout this game that would foreshadow the season that was to follow. Celtic lacked quality in the middle of the park and a manager that was not blinded by the fog of obsession. They would get that midfield and a new boss, in Wim Jansen, who was more detached and analytical.

Rangers needed a huge influx of new blood which is often costly and always a big risk when done in the one go. The spine of that new side, Lorenzo Amoruso, Jonas Thern and Marco Negri, would not be fit enough for the entire season, hence the need to rely once more on this band of brothers, who were already showing large signs of breaking point in this fixture. It would prove to be a bridge too far.

But that was for another day. There was one final reason why Walter Smith’s approach to this game should be venerated, even in these more enlightened times: it worked. Under extreme pressure, he sent his boys out for a battle and, as Brian Laudrup said when he recalled the story of Archie Knox’s team talk, “we went out there and lived up to the expectations.”