RANGERS COME UP SHORT IN THE END AS TOP FLIGHT PROVES ELUSIVE
Motherwell inflict more misery on Rangers as promotion bid falls flat with a Fir Park flop
FOR Rangers, the journey is over. It took three years, burned a sum in excess of £80 million , featured endless off-field turmoil, cost them a manager and lined t he pockets of countless chancers, wide -boys and corporate vandals.
If nothing else, they went out kicking and punching. Literally in the case of Bilel Mohsni. No one sums up the flaky, erratic, unreliable nature of this club more than this Tunisian liability.
A man described accurately by Gordon Strachan as having more regard for himself than he ever did for his club or supporters.
The only relief for Rangers supporters is this. After an unedifying, disgraceful spat with Motherwell players Lee Erwin and Fraser Kerr sparked fan unrest and three red cards at the final whistle, Mohsni will never be seen around Ibrox again. Few will bemoan his departure.
His foolishness completed a day of utter misery and ignominy for Rangers. Their fate is another season of visiting Alloa, Dumbarton and Raith Rovers in the SPFL Championship next season. It is hardly one to savour.
Motherwell’s joy was unconstrained and sometimes out of control. SFA chief Stewart Regan looked on from the stands and will not have appreciated what he saw. One i diot supporter recklessly whacked Rangers skipper Lee McCulloch in the face with a flag at a throw-in.
By the 51st minute, when Rangers keeper Cammy Bell made a mess of dealing with man- of- t he - match Marvin Johnson’s awkward, looping, heavily- deflected opening goal, there was a lit flare on the pitch.
In every sense this was a day of bedlam. A frantic end to another Scottish season. Motherwell supporters chanted: ‘ We are staying up’ after another deflected strike from Lionel Ainsworth i n 70 minutes and an injury-time penalty for John Sutton, his 15th of the season.
By then, Mohsni had lost the plot. He refused to shake hands with Erwin, the young striker pushed him, and in incredible scenes the Tunisian kicked and punched him, drawing blood.
Erwin did not miss him in a post-match television interview, branding Mohsni ‘embarrassing’. The ill-feeling continued outside the stadium when the defender challenged him once again to a square go. Embarrassing barely covers it.
The only mercy was that the pitch invasion by exuberant Motherwell fans was constrained. Rangers supporters had suffered enough emotionally without adding physical wounds to their pain.
Home keeper George Long did not have a save to make all game. McCall’s team came here seeking an early goal. In the end, they barely came close to one over the whole 90 minutes.
Motherwell enjoyed huge fortune with their first two strikes, but as McCall admitted afterwards, a 6-1 aggregate tells no lies.
‘Today was all about the first goal and to lose a goal like we did today was sickening, if I’m honest,’ he admitted.
‘Today we came and believed we could do it. It was very edgy. They sat deep and let us attack.
‘Sometimes you need a little bit of fortune in a game and I will not take anything away f rom Motherwell. Over the piece, they were the better side and people will remember the last 30 minutes.
‘But if we could have got the first goal it could have been different. It’s ifs and buts. That’s football.’
McCall made some big decisions here which did not work.
Kris Boyd was back from Siberia, up front with Kenny Miller. Shane Ferguson made his first start on the left flank after a loan move from Newcastle in January.
The gameplan was clear. Ferguson would cross and Boyd would finish. For Rangers it did not quite work out that way. The Irishman, desperately short of game time, left the pitch to be replaced by young Tom Walsh in the 55th minute. Boyd was hooked three minutes later for Nicky Clark.
All of this will throw more focus on the interim manager’s Ibrox f uture which, currently, l ooks as bleak as that of the 12 players who are out of contract.
‘There will be a lot of them for whom it will be their last games for Rangers today,’ added McCall. ‘I remember my last game and said
to the lads not to have r egrets about it. It wasn’t down to eff ort or desire today.
‘If someone had said to me I would take it to May 31, I would have been delighted. But we have lacked quality. We have defended poorly at times, there is no doubt about that.
‘In football, you have
got to foster that togetherness. I t has been an honour and privilege for me to be involved in it. I knew it was a big gig when I first came here.’
When Rangers did create chances, they fell to the wrong man. Marius Zaliukas almost looped a header under the bar. Before half-time he also thumped a Ferguson corner over the bar from 10 yards.
However, slowly and gradually, the Motherwell nerves began to settle. As if they realised, suddenly, there was a reason Rangers were in this predicament. That the Ibrox side were not up to much.
One of their fans showed less composure, poking a flag towards Ibrox defender McCulloch as he went to take a throw-in.
As the half ended, the home team
were creating the chances. Stephen McManus headed narrowly wide and Johnson, a terrific find for Ian Baraclough in January, fired a fierce shot just wide.
He did it again to greater effect in 51 minutes, picking the ball up on the halfway line and showing neat trickery and footwork to dance inside and try his luck from 20 yards with his left foot.
But for a wicked deflection off Zaliukas, it might have come to nothing. As the ball reared up into the air, spinning horribly downwards at some speed, it was obvious Rangers keeper Bell was in trouble.
He tried to punch it and failed abjectly to deal with the threat in any shape or form. To widespread disbelief the ball — and the keeper — nestled in the back of the net.
You knew then Rangers were done. They needed three but did not have one in them.
It was over, to all intents, in the 70th minute. Yet again, it was a Johnson breakaway down the l eft flank which ended in the ball being rolled unselfishly inside to Ainsworth. As with the first goal, his shot took a deflection, but the result was the same.
The arrival of Mohsni usually ends in an incident of some description. So it proved in the aftermath of a third injurytime Motherwell goal, from John Sutton, his penalty slotted home following a foul by Lee Wallace on Erwin.
It turned rather ugly and unpleasant thereafter. The inquest will be long and weary. Most of all at Ibrox, where Rangers must now wonder when their turmoil will end.