Best & Worst: Rangers

Helicopters, lumberjacks and goal gluts with David Edgar, mastermind of Gers podcast Heart and Hand

XI

BEST: Goram, Stevens, Butcher, Gough, Numan, Laudrup, Souness, Gascoigne, Cooper, Hateley, Mccoist.

WORST: Simonsen, Argyriou, Cribari, Mohsni, Vanoli, Rothen, Black, Bernard, K. Hutton, Jeffers, Kyle.

PLAYER

B: Have you ever seen God? Well, I have, and his name is Brian Laudrup [ right]. Not so much a footballer as a walking sonnet, he glided beyond defenders on mudheaps without a hair out of place on his lovely head.

W: Frannie Jeffers. He cost Arsene Wenger £ 10m once, so he must be good... right? Instead, we got 21 games without him touching the ball. Must be George Weah’s cousin.

MOMENT

B: Helicopter Sunday, May 2005. Nacho Novo’s UEFA Cup semi- final penalty is a contender, but to go from despair to ecstasy in such a short space of time – and win the title – will never be beaten.

W: The Ramsdens Cup final defeat to Raith under Ally Mccoist. Just a total feeling of: ‘ How did it come to this?’

GAME

B: Rangers 6- 1 Dunfermline, May 2003. The league title coming down not only to the last game, but how many goals we scored in that match? It was extraordinary. Chris Sutton has never gotten over it. Good.

W: So many from the lower- league years. I’ll go for a particularly painful 4- 0 trouncing at Hibernian’s Easter Road that could have been doubled.

SEASON

B: 1992- 93. A treble, Mccoist and Hateley scoring every seven minutes or so, and that very first Champions League season – defeating English champions Leeds en route. It felt like the most sophisticated and exciting thing ever to happen.

W: 2011- 12. As the impact of our wretched financial mismanagement took hold, it became impossible to focus on the football. Fans should never be forced to need the Financial Times for the latest on their club.

SIGNING

B: Paul Gascoigne [ below]: we loved him, and he loved us. If Laudrup was opera, then Gazza was The Ramones. Brilliant, exciting, wild: a joy to watch. W: Egil Ostenstad. For a guy who had actually been quite decent in the Premier League, he looked like a drunken lumberjack with us. Almost heroically hopeless. Almost.

CULT HERO

B: Nacho Novo. Not the most gifted player, but the brilliant Spaniard gave you everything he had and loved the big moments. Old Firm goals, cup final winners and that penalty against Fiorentina which took us to the 2008 UEFA Cup Final. W: Filip Sebo. A poor spell at Ibrox, but the fans could see he was giving his best.

MANAGER

B: Walter Smith [ left, inset]. Every Rangers fan’s ideal dad: stern, unbending, authoritative, successful and inspirational. W: Pedro Caixinha. WTF was that all about? The Portuguese no one who got his job on the back of a good Powerpoint presentation, then went on to prove that we should never hire anyone who we need to Google first.

CHANT

B: ‘ He dives to the left, he dives to the right: Allan Mcgregor shags 10 birds a night’. A tribute to our sexually voracious goalkeeper.

W: ‘ He dives to the left, he dives to the right: Neil Alexander goes home to his wife’. A ( sort of) tribute to our monogamous backup goalkeeper.

HARD MAN

B: Terry Hurlock. Some people you just instantly know not to mess with. Terry was hard as nails.

W: Ian Black – sneaky, cowardly wee clown. You know that phrase, ‘ you’d love him if he played for your team’? He did – and I still couldn’t stand him. Run a club- specific podcast or fanzine and want to feature here? Email your choices to fourfourtwo@ futurenet. com