MAGIC IN MANCHESTER

IT was on the morning of the Champions League tie at Old Trafford that the Daily Mail's English edition carried a story which had the travelling Scottish press pack hooting with laughter.

Michael Walker, began his preview on how he thought Rangers would approach the task of facing Manchester United, in swaggering style.

He wrote -" NO SURRENDER! For Rangers supporters that has always been the cry and that siege mentality has slipped like a glove on to the teams Walter Smith sent out in away games in Europe for the past two seasons."

Twenty four hours later and those same sports pages of the Daily Mail were spewing bile from the laptop of big baw faced Martin Samuel.

Fast forward another day and Samuel's opinion was completely discredited as he described Braga, thumped 6-0 by Arsenal, as adopting the same five across midfield formation that Rangers had against United. So he either can't count, knows nothing about football, or maybe even both.

However, not all of his southern colleagues were so rampantly insular, though what the inky business calls the colour piece, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph beside the byline of Kevin Garside, was partricularly obnoxious.

The Telegraph's number one football man, Henry Winter - my particular favourite in England - was much more measured and gave Rangers and Walter Smith their due, as did the Guardian's Kevin McCarra, an old buddy of mine from his days on Scotland on Sunday.

Kevin made the point that Rangers were not the first team to try a blanket defence against Manchester United, but  they did it better and more successfuly than any of the others.

Of course the fact  Sir Alex Ferguson changed his team from the one which threw away a two goal lead in the last minutes away to Everton, seemed to surprise many, and has even led to fevered calls from some supporters of another club - one which is not taking part in any European competition - for UEFA to take action against Manchester United for fielding what they call a weakened team.

It's unlikely UEFA will give house room to the deranged rantings of these poor deluded fools, but if they did, what would be an appropriate sanction against United? All three points being given to Rangers? As I said, the deranged rantings of deluded fools.

And a weakened team? The side Ferguson chose contained players with a total on 393 international caps, included the England captain, the Scotland captain, England's Player of the Year, an £11m centre half and a £16m winger.

Oh, and when that winger, Valencia, was so tragically carried off, his replacement was a man who for me, is one of the three best and most consistent players in England over the last 15 years, Ryan Giggs.

What in fact happened was that Fergie was outfoxed by the old silver fox of Scottish football, Smith. At the official UEFA pre match press confereence on Monday, Ferguson praised the Rangers manager as an astute tactical thinker, adding that he could hear Smith's brain whirring as it strove to come up with a plan to thwart him.

Smith did all of that, and by keeping his plan under wraps until the very last minute - not even telling the team until just before they were due to leave their hotel on Tuesday - he ensured no talkative stooge could blab to the tabloids.

Aye, you've got to be up early to put one over on Smith.

There were other nuggets to be gleaned from being in Manchester, especially in the Europa Suite the day before the game, watching Smith and Ferguson perform in such different styles on the podium.

One pearl which dropped from Ferguson was when he told of his shock at the way Lloyds Bank were dealing with Rangers after Smith had told him how small the club's debt to those bankers really is.

Of course he didn't come right out and say it, but there was a sense that Ferguson, a man whose intimate relationship with the Labour Party's powerbrokers has given him an extra insight into what motivates people, and how they go about damaging others, may even have been pondering on Lloyds' motivation.

It's something this blog has pointed out before, and will do again. Investigations on Lloyds personel are ongoing, and when the trail I am now following ends, all will be revealed.

Whether or not the nation's newspapers will be brave enough and professional enough to follow up on any revelation remains to be seen.

But back to what Rangers achieved for Scottish football out on the turf at that magical Old Trafford arena.

Those of us of a certain vintage were reminded how we gazed with awe on how Italian sides could come to this country and be battered, but who could marshal a defensive tactic, the Catenaccio - the Bolt - to bar the way of so many of Scotland's greats.

What Smith and Rangers did in Manchester was to adopt that professional approach with such success that keeper Allan McGregor did not have to make one noteable save.

Compare that to the performance of Andy Goram at Elland Road to keep Leeds United at bay in 1992, and compare the standard of players available to Smith in Yorkshire to those he could call on in Lancashire.

That was the measure of what happened on a night when it was United who looked like those Scottish sides of yore and Rangers who took on the mantle of the polished and so tactically sopisticated  old Italian masters.

The Daily Mail's sports writer, Michael Walker was indeed prophetic when his penned  "NO SURRENDER" introduction appeared in the Daily Mail, Britain's second biggest selling daily newspaper on the morning of a match which will now find a place in the history of  Rangers.