SAVED BY BRUCE ALMIGHTY
Anderson answers Dons’ prayers as late strike denies Gerrard the glory in opener 1 1
PLAYING against ten men for 78 minutes without a shot on target, Aberdeen were crying out for an intervention. It came, deep in injury time, from the divine foot of Bruce Almighty.
Bruce Anderson spent last season on loan at Elgin City. The 19-year-old made 13 starts in League Two, scoring six goals. Nothing he did at Borough Briggs came close to the significance of the strike on his Aberdeen debut which cast a shadow over Steven Gerrard’s first league game as Rangers manager.
Make no mistake. Even when Alfredo Morelos was sent off after 12 minutes for a daft kick at provocateur Scott McKenna, Rangers were the better team. As the board went up for six minutes of injury time, Gerrard looked likely to follow an old Pittodrie script. Even Mark Warburton and Pedro Caixinha made a habit of winning here and Aberdeen have now won just one of their last nine against their bitter rivals.
How much worse that record might have looked but for a fateful, crucial strike from Anderson, a substitute thrown on for the last 19 minutes.
Despite an injury-time leveller that was akin to a punch to the temple, Gerrard proclaimed himself satisfied by his first league game in charge of Rangers.
‘Listen, I enjoyed it. The excitement this morning was really good,’ he said.
‘That’s the reason I’ve come into management.
‘We said to the players before the game: “When you come to places like this, put your shoulders back and enjoy it”.
‘You are coming to play a huge fixture in the SPFL. Go and enjoy yourselves. Believe in yourselves and back yourselves, you are a better team than Aberdeen and we proved that.’
That seemed an unlikely scenario when Morelos saw red, with the Colombian’s suspect temperament once again getting the better of him.
It was a soft dismissal, given by an assistant who clearly didn’t see McKenna — the coveted Dons defender removed after half an hour with a hamstring tear — barging into his opponent first.
Had McKenna been yielding a fishing rod with a hook, he could hardly have got a bigger bite. Morelos, a player who seems to operate on the edge, aimed a flailing incensed boot at his opponent. He missed, but the rules are the rules.
On a day when referee Kevin Clancy was highly erratic — McKenna wasn’t even booked — he had to go.
Back in December, Rangers were reduced to ten men at the same ground when midfielder Ryan Jack was sent off after 56 minutes. The former Don didn’t last the whole game here either, exiting late in the game after a thumping challenge by Stevie May.
Until then, he was the most influential player, his controlled aggression closing down every avenue of attack for an Aberdeen side stung by the loss of an opening goal from the penalty spot.
Despite their numerical advantage, the recent history of this fixture told a cautionary tale for the home team. In four meetings last season, the Dons failed to beat Rangers once.
For that reason, it would be unwise to read too much into the significance of this result in the race for second. When Jack saw red seven months ago, Rangers still won 2-1 — and finished third.
Yet Gerrard was bullish after this, saying: ‘Anyone in this stadium or watching on Sky will know we are a better team than Aberdeen. We’ve just proven it.’
There was no real surprise when the visitors took the lead in the second major controversy of the game after 30 minutes.
Josh Windass was pulled back by Dominic Ball as Scott Arfield burst into the area, the Aberdeen defender making no effort to play the ball. Rangers players surrounded the referee demanding a red card, the pleas falling on deaf ears and prompting the first hint of a siege mentality from Gerrard after the game.
When the hubbub died down, James Tavernier smashed the spot-kick past Joe Lewis.