The Bipolar Years (Part 4: The The Rangers Trilogy: A Tale of Three Clubs)

1. Beautiful Sunday

The best away game I’ve been at by a distance. Why?  Winning at the Big Hoose is always special.  Winning at the Big Hoose the day before they were about to go fucking Pete Tong and everyone knew it was absolutely magical.  I don’t get to many away games but there was no way I was missing this one.  A lot of people will rightly cite either of the two games below against the new club with Rangers in it’s name as the best atmosphere they’ve been in as a United fan and the biggest pish-ripping sessions they’ve ever experienced. But make no mistake, ask anyone of the 1000-or-so United fans who were at this game and they will tell you that this one was the best and the most brutal assassination of their support and club.  Beating the real thing will always top beating the tribute act.  We were outstanding in the first half and it is incredible to think that less than 5 months ago we looked like a disjointed mess of a team.  GMS and on this day, Stuart Armstrong were immense playing wide either side whilst Garry Kenneth probably had his last decent game in a United jersey (his ballooning weight was now becoming apparent as rumours of 2am gut-buster specials at Clarks all-night bakery begun to ring-true.  You might get away with that when you are 18 but by the time you are 23-24 it catches up with you in no-time).  However, the star-man that day was undoubtedly Paul Dixon.  His link-up play with GMS was outstanding all match and everyone on Sportscene later on said he must be due a Scotland call-up (which of course he didn’t get until he moved to the English Championship). The video where you see the wee smirk of pride on Peter Houston’s face is class.  As was the one deluded Hun sitting beside the away end who was cracking up with anger throughout the game.  The away section of Ibrox is good when you score because near the top is a big platform area which is quality for a dance and jump around when you score.  It was utter limbs when the goals went in.

Bust in the morning

Anyway fuck this. Let’s get to Rangers dying:

The deluded reaction after the game:  “We need to buy.” You’re about £80 million in debt you fucking tit. It’s ok though, “Ally will lead us.” Where? Up to Sue Barker's house I presume. 

The next day, “The Big House Must Stay Open”. The Big Hoose Hun is my favourite. 

“Nobody wants to talk to the fans.” I wonder why. The boy greeting. Magic. 

 

Or remixed if you fancy a dance: 

The hero of the hour speaks:  Sock it to them Craigy! Fuckin shitebag!

It’s ok though because they don’t do walking away eh Ally?

Sing it to me baby!

Bomber’s got a plan though.  A cunning plan.  He’s gonna set up a bank account and youse are all gaunnae pit yer season ticket money in to save the Rangurz away fae Craig Whyte and Charles Green and thon Taxman. Some powerful people. We’ll get the deeds. The stumbling bocks. 

The meeting.  The phone call.  Craig Whyte. Booo!

It’s ok though because this is all Dundee United’s fault. Or is it...

2. SEVCO Saturday

Has there ever been more of a match made in heaven than Charles Green and SEVCO? I had a wee look back at the press coverage of this game.  In the same interview he firstly warns of crowd trouble because we were selling tickets to away fans (for a designated away section), claimed anyone could turn up with a blue, white and red scarf on to cause trouble (those pesky Chelsea fans again no doubt), praised the Zombies for their boycott then demanded ALL the tickets for the game for SEVCO fans because United hadn’t sold any tickets (there was about 10,000 at the game).  What a fucking tit.  It was ok though, because the The Rangers players were going to give us hell at Tannadice.  Their fans had demanded it:

I turned up with a bit of Whyte on my face.  Craig Whyte to be specific.  Green had succeeded in hyping up the potential for bother that’s for sure. The rumours on the Saturday morning of this game actually had to be seen to be believed: there was a few thousand of the cunts turning up cause bother outside. They were going to smash up the Ambassador (be surprised if anyone noticed the difference), Caird Avenue around Frews was barricaded off.  Honest to fuck.  Whilst all of this of course turned out to be hokum it actually had the opposite effect from what Charlie Chuckles was trying to achieve.  He thought he’d scare our team and support into lying down to SEVCO (as St Johnstone had done in the League Cup earlier that season).  Instead, he turbocharged our support and to give Jackie McNamara probably the only bit of credit I’ll give him in this series, he had the team totally relaxed which was exactly the right approach for this game given all of the shite which surrounded it.  It would have been interesting to see how it would have panned out had Peter Houston remained in charge.  I think we’d still have won, but it might not have been the canter that this game turned out to be. Most people I know (myself included) decided to make a day of it and got on it early doors so it was the drunkest, most hyped-up and noisy United home support I’d seen since the game against Slask the year before.

Its not often the whole of Scottish football is on our side.  The United support didn’t disappoint and absolutely ripped the pish for the entire afternoon. It was funny as fuck.  When Johnny Russell scored right from kick off the scenes were something else.  A lot of comments online after the game from fans of other teams were a mixture of hilarity, praise and astonishment at just how merciless our support had actually been and what was even better was that the cameras picked every bit of it up which meant the orcs on Follow Follow were absolutely foaming at the mouth.  Me writing what was being chanted really doesn’t do it justice so I’d just ask those who were there to think back when they are having a bad day and those who weren’t there, try to imagine what it would have been like, then multiply it by ten.  Their hatred and kiddy-on blame of United to deflect attention away from the real culprits for the death of Glasgow Rangers: themselves, was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Make no mistake, those cunts insatiable desire for more and more ‘big name signings’ by any means necessary, their inability to rase any significant money to save their club when it was going down the tubes (Christ even Dundee raised enough to save themselves when they were £26 million in the red, so why couldn’t a club with at least twenty times the supporter base raise any more than about half a million?) coupled with their complete gullibility at swallowing everything the likes of Murray, Whyte and eventually Green and now King fed them shows why they went bust.  The only thing ‘off-the-radar’ at Ibrox is their fans stupidity.  Back to the game and after a couple of slack moments following the goal big JD’s header led to party time for the second half which reached biblical proportions (something their fans should understand given their religious fanaticism) when Johnny Russell cheekily chipped in the 3^rd and Naismith then Ian Black lost the plot.  The perfect end to a perfect afternoon.  The best bit was when our entire support started the chant of, “You can stick your fucking boycott up your arse,” giving it some serious vitriol and pointing to the hospo boxes where Charles Green was sitting.  Unfortunately, there’s no clip on YouTube.  But there is this:  

And this:

 

And these:

 

I actually felt a bit sorry for the people who showed a bit of gumption and went to the game in their end.  It mostly looked like local families with kids who probably never go to see Rangers any other time.  The poor cunts were actually getting put on watch-lists and getting threatened afterwards by the lunatic majority.  It also turned out too that the head of one of their supporter’s clubs who was instrumental in calling for the boycott actually went to the game after all.  LOL.  Me?  I went out on the lash and ended up in the casino listening to the worst crooner ever and trying to put my National Insurance card into a computerised roulette table.  Who knew they were still a thing?  I wasn’t the only one, there were a lot of Arab casualties that night.

3. No Huns at Hampden
Just at Ibrox instead. One for the neutrals this one. Could you imagine what it would be like if the SFA, the BBC, SKY and BT actually favoured the The Rangers? Again, the build up to this had to be seen to be believed as United were blamed for everything from the 'Same old Alloa, always cheating' to not paying the face painter or something. Stephen Thompson took the brunt of the baiting for the crime of being the first Chairman to put his head above the parapit to say he would be voting against SEVCO getting to enter the Scottish Premier League and thereby bypassing the other leagues (I honestly don't even know if he was). This decision was based on a number of United fans, myself included stating they would either boycott games, or, in my case, merchandise if SEVCO bypassed all the leagues rules. Zombies were also unhappy that in a former life, Thompson also charged them the price of one and a half football matches for going to watch one and a half football matches. Imagine that. Did the bus companies give them the second trip free? No? I assume they got boycotts and death threats as well then?

United had gone from a poor start that season, to the four-goal flurry from October to December, to a slowdown post Christmas so although we were still clear favourites in this game, it was going to be harder than last years demolition on SEVCO Saturday, especially since they were still throwing money and contracts around like confetti (but were papped out of the League Cup by Forfar). Aggressive talk was a daily occurrence from their players, management, board members, ex-players, pundits, supposed journalists and fans groups about being kicked when they were down, giving us hell, hurting us in retaliation for hurting them (?????).  The game itself was a real contrast in styles: United were younger, smaller and much more skillfull whilst The Rangers were much bigger, older (with the exception of Fraser Aird), more physical and stauncher (especially Fraser Aird).  Watching us defend corners against them was a particular source of horror as we lined up with Gav Gunning marking Bilel Mohsni (who at the time appeared to be a total clown but actually, he turned out to be a decent player and a good lad), John Souttar marking Jon Daly (shudder, for a number of reasons, big JD was making a performance art version of 'The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle' by the Sex Pitsols I'm sure of it) and finally, all 5ft 8 of Mark Wilson marking 6ft Lee McCulloch (fucking hell) who was again just marking time whilst he waited for his dream job to finally come along. Bearing in mind that Rado was in goal as well, it didn't exactly inspire confidence.  Luckily, we managed to use up all of our luck in this game, because clearly, we'd not need any against St Johnstone in the final.  Jackie had sussed them out over the course the season.

At least in the first half of this game we kept the ball up in their end for the bulk of the half, with moments of magic from GMS and Ryan Gauld putting us 2-0 up, leading to bedalm in the Broomloan as all of the party tunes were belted out: ZOMBIE, You're not Rangers anymore, There's only one Craig Whyte, Stand up if your clubs not dead, ZOMBIE etc etc. Although we lost a late goal with a free kick, half time was a source of particular amusement with a fans penalty shoot-out which of course, we won (changed days) where each of our fans did a different Gavin Gunning celebration after scoring: The Chicken Dance, The Rolly-Polly and best of all The Fleet Rule, the only 2/3's full main stand of Zombies appeared utterly bemused by football fans having a good laugh about something other than chicken suppers.  The second half however, was a different story (copyright Alan Saunders).  Personally other than the goal I have no recollection of the game since I watched it through my fingers as Rangers lumped ball after ball into our box.  The only thing which saved us was that their incompetence exceeded ours tbh.  That and their goalie.  The scenes which followed Nadir robbing the boy are utter folklore. Celebrating before he's scored, people in the top tier (where I was) ending up about 20 rows down. I'm sure Hooly has a video of it.  It's epic. Check out the videos below.  Happy times, albeit soured by bother outside the ground where neither side were angels.  I saw some young Utd supporter lamp an old boy whilst he was sitting in his car (with kids) at a junction.  At least in this case other arabs firstly apprehended the cunt and reported him to the police whilst others helped the boy who's nose was burst open.  Some people need to get a grip.  I heard stories of similar assaults on United fans outside the ground as well.  Fuck knows what it will be like if we go up this season.  One thing is for sure, on the park we will be much more ready for them than we would have been had we gone up under McKinnon or Csaba.  After all, we've got a proud record to protect against Scotland's newest club/company. 

Finally, what's Bomber up to these days?  Sadly, he never did get to set up his bank account. After his ill-fated spell as Funster-in-Chief he appears to have moved into the energy business.  Very apt for a man so full of hot air.

Beyond parody.  Or, beyond paraproddy if you will (Cheers to Huntedbyafreak for that one).

I'll leave you with a few pictures of Nadir, the beautiful big mad bastard. I don't know if I'll finish this series this side of the new year, so if I don't it's been a blast.  Thanks for all the feedback. Merry Christmas. X