Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Dundee must at Ibrox and
AS Dundee get set to face Rangers at Ibrox on Saturday, I’ve picked out four games I played in with varying results.
I always found Ibrox an intimidating place to play. However, if you could stay in the game for the first 20 minutes, you always felt their fans would begin to get nervy, which sometimes got to the players on the pitch.
RANGERS 1 DUNDEE 2 November 28, 1999.
We went to play a table-topping Rangers team that had just beaten Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League midweek, so no one expected anything other than a home win.
We set up as a 3-5-2 and, with Craig Ireland scoring from a Shaun McSkimming corner, took the lead after 14 minutes.
Big Rab Douglas saved a penalty and had some great stops before Rod Wallace equalised after 70 minutes.
We battled for everything and had to rely on blocks and good defending to keep it level.
A Gavin Rae goal in injury-time secured a 2-1 win for us and inflicted a first league defeat of the season for Rangers.
RANGERS 0 DUNDEE 2 March 14, 2001.
This was the last time Dundee beat Rangers at Ibrox and it was a game that left the Dundee fans with a happy trip home.
The Bonettis were in charge for this encounter and a first-half goal by Claudio Caniggia gave us the lead at the interval.
The expected onslaught from Rangers never really happened, especially after Craig Moore was sent off early in the second 45.
Steven Milne scored in injury-time to make it 2-0 as the Dark Blues support went crazy in the away end.
We had played them a few weeks before at Dens when Juan Sara had missed two penalties in the defeat but this was a nervous Rangers in front of their own fans compared to that match.
RANGERS 3 DUNDEE 1 September 27, 2003.
This was a game where we had kept Rangers quiet for long spells but, as the game wore on, the more dominant they became.
We went into the break level at 0-0 but on the hour mark Shota Arveladze put the Gers in front.
We managed to get ourselves back into the game when Nacho Novo scored with 15 minutes remaining.
Rangers really piled on the pressure late on and eventually got their noses in front with a 25-yard strike from Paulo Vanoli.
They made it 3-1 when Arveladze scored his second of the game in the dying seconds and, for as much as we had done well, Rangers’ dominance saw them through.
RANGERS 3 DUNDEE 0 December 11, 2004.
A Rangers team containing ex-Dees Zurab Khizanishvili and Nacho Novo put us to the sword early on in this game.
We started poorly and were two down after five minutes following goals by Nacho and Dado Prso. However, we did try to get back into the game and had a few efforts which were enough to get the Ibrox faithful a little nervous.
But they sealed the win with a Bob Malcolm strike just after half-time to make it 3-0.
When you’re 2-0 down at Ibrox after five minutes it would have been easy to cave in but the boys kept battling.
That’s something the current crop of Dark Blues will have to bear in mind on Saturday.
Ibrox can be intimidating but you have to handle that and keep it tight.
The longer the game goes on, the more risks Rangers will have to take — which may just leave space for the Dee to capitalise.