LARSSON. Laudrup. Moravcik. McCoist.
Two hours before kick-off, Sky Sports were whetting the armchair audience’s appetite with an all-you-can-savour buffet of Old Firm greatness.
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Goal after brilliant goal, game after star-studded game.
It was like a restaurant luring customers in with the smell of lobster thermador. Then serving up yesterday’s leftover tripe and onions.
Because this was awful. This was honking. It left a worse taste in the football lover’s mouth than old socks boiled in sour milk.
Larsson? Laudrup? Moravcik? McCoist?
They might as well as have been creatures of a different species, playing a whole other sport in a galaxy far, far away for all the relation their talents bore to this dross.
Brendan Rodgers described it as brutal, which was just about the kindest critique I heard from anyone who managed to make it through 97 minutes that made you seriously wonder whether sticking forks in your eyeballs might have been more fun.
When it was finally over, Rangers were clapped off the park by a support whose expectations had been of another pumping à la Bruges in midweek.
Celtic? They made 508 passes, but at least half of them were aimed towards their own goal.
Though I suppose their negative, fear-ridden performance summed up a fixture which has gone backwards faster than a Tug’o’War team on steroids.
Put it this way. When the stoppage time board went up just before half-time and the tannoy guy announced that “the fourth official has indicated that there will be a minimum four minutes…”, the only surprise was that he didn’t add “of this utter p*sh.”
Because that’s what it was. Complete and utter p*sh.
A mess of aimless, brainless nonsense. A blunderfest of misplaced passes, a porridge of players without the courage to take their man on, without the initiative to grab the game and make a name for themselves.
As the teams came out just before midday, the Copland Road stand unfurled a gigantic display with the words RANGERS MAKE GLASGOW and an image of the Duke of Wellington statue in Glasgow’s city centre, except with a red white and blue traffic cone on his steed’s head.
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A fitting prelude to a game populated by carthorses and where a lorryload of traffic cones might have had more intelligent movement.
If a goal was ever going to come, it was always going to be from a blunder; most probably, given how often they got in each other’s way, one caused by a combination of Rangers keeper Jack Butland not wanting to come off his line for through balls and centre-back Nasser Djiga panicking as he realised he might need to take some responsibility.
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Every time the ball dropped between them, you could feel three-and-a-half sides of Ibrox sucking a big in through its teeth. Then the ball was land in Row Z for the umpty-twelfth time and the collective sigh of relief almost blew the corner flags away.
At the end, Martin waited to congratulate each of his players as they plodded off, a rare vote of thanks from the fans ringing in the ears.
But it’s telling in the extreme that as he then turned to head up the tunnel, all you heard was a storm of boos from every direction.
As for his opposite number?
Once again, Rodgers shrugged and alluded to the Parkhead board not giving him the injection of quality he believes is needed if his team are to keep getting better.
But it’s not the board’s fault that the players he already has were good enough to win the league and League Cup last year and to punch above their weight in the Champions League, but are playing in diver’s boots this season.
It’s not the board who couldn’t scored in three and a half hours against the champions of Kazakhstan. It’s not the board whose first thought every time they got on the ball here was to do a 180 and make yet another negative, backwards pass.
Rodgers says the likes of Daizen Maeda, after four years at the club, needs someone to come in as competition so he’s forced to keep his standards up.
Shouldn’t a player who’s being paid fortunes do that as of right, though?
And if he isn’t, shouldn’t his manager be booting him up the backside and reminding him of why he’s living a millionaire’s lifestyle?
See, that’s the thing about this game and the empty shirts who made it such a dreadful excuse for a spectacle – they really are paid ridiculous amounts of money.
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There were guys out there on £30,000 a week and more. Yet they looked incapable of the most basic five-yard pass, of running into space for a mate to find them, of demanding the ball so they could make things happend.
Bottom line? These two teams are supposed to be Scotland’s elite, yet on a day that we’re told is all about bragging rights and proving who’s the best of the best, every single one of them looked terrified to lose.
Truth is, there’s only one way the turgid mess they created will ever be packaged up as a preview for Old Firm clashes of the future.
So when they throw back to the studio, the presenter can say: “Well, at least we know it won’t be as a bad as that today…”
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