GUARDIAN'S GLENDENNING BRANDS RANGERS FC AS HUNS

NOW I know there won't be many of you reading this who take the Guardian. Actually there are few folk anywhere who buy it.

However, its online presence and penetration is phenomenal. According to the website, Soccer Lens, it has 33 million readers. That's just slightly more than half the population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Which makes it important that the Guardian.co.uk is as tightly policed as the ''hard''copy of the newspaper.

Something though, which the Guardian, on its pages and online, most certainly is, is the most politically correct daily publication in Britain, if not the world.

Not for a moment would anyone on the Guardian ever think of describing a disabled person as a "cripple." Quite right too. The Guardian's choice would no doubt be "differently abled." All minorities are treated with kid gloves.

Not so Rangers FC. Step forward Barry Glendenning, the deputy sports editor of Guardian.co.uk who, on Wednesday afternoon Twittered an obscenity about Rangers.

It seems he fancies himself as a bit of a tipster and the twit's Twitter message read: "Best bet of the day/month/year? Bursaspor to beat Rangers @ 3-1. The Huns Big Cup record is awful."

Now I remember when the folk who wrote sport for the Guardian were giants of the inky business. I often shared a press box down south with David Lacy, who was not only a fine writer and good judge, but an absolute gentleman.

Then there was a period in the early 1980s in the Midlands when the Guardian's man there, Charlie Burgess, and I became pals who shared many a balti in Birmingham's curry triangle after a midweek match. Big Charlie was wonderfully diffident, supremely talented and charming.

It is a tradition which is carried on to this day by Kevin McCarra, whose match report on the Manchester United-Rangers Champions League encounter was a model of balance and insight.

Glendenning clearly does not belong to that tradition. Perhaps the fact he lists being a stand-up comedian as one of his talents explains a great deal. Maybe he's better at being funny than he is as a tipster, for anyone wading in on Bursaspor  at 3-1 would have lost their dough.

It is just the latest in a long line of the use of the offensive word, Huns. The last was in the Scotsman a mere fortnight ago, which led to a signed apology by editor John McLellan.

It will be interesting to see if the Guardian's celebrated editor, Alan Rusbridger also grovels. Though this time any apology should not be directed only at those who support Rangers, but at the club itself. For it was Rangers FC which was the target for Glendenning's slur.

It is a matter for anyone who read his twitter, who may wish to get in touch with the Guardian's editor to complain, or to contact the Press Complaints Commission.

The actual origin and true meaning of the word Hun was well researched and documented on a still available previous blog, should a recap be required.

It is hard to see what prompted such a disgraceful slur, with the use of a word which the Guardian approved anti sectarian organisation, Nil By Mouth, has long listed as a banned word.

As far as I can see, Glendenning has no ties with Scotland. In fact his background does not even appear to be British, as his previous employment on his biography says he worked for the Hot Press magazine in Ireland, and with the Irish Sunday Independent.

What makes his low insult more dangerous is the number of people who are exposed to his opinions. He is often found at the helm of Guardian Unlimited, which provides minute by minute reports and which features live coverage of Champions League games and internationals, and he also appears on Guardian Unlimited's football podcast, Football Weekly, hosted by well known television broadcaster, James Richardson.

And get this. In an interview on the Soccer Lens site, Glendenning says : "Some of the correspondence we get from fans is often astonishingly offensive."

So what the devil does he think comparing Rangers chairman, Alastair Johnston, chief executive, Martin Bain, manager Walter Smith, captain and Scotland's Player of the Year, Davie Weir, and all the others at Ibrox, with Adolf Hitler, Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengle and the rest of the Nazis is?

Offensive does not even begin to describe it.

Now I know there are some Rangers supporters out there who believe it is all just banter. They should ponder on what might be the outcry if a newspaper was to refer to any other Scottish club and its supporters in a similarly derogatory way.

Aye, I thought so.

What, in my view, Glendenning's sordid slur showed is that so many press people and other media folk believe Rangers and their supporters are fair game. The fans and the Ibrox club can be insulted in a way they would never dream of in the case of any other organisation, institution or people from any other section of the population.

I wouldn't go so far as to say Glendenning is a bigot. And certainly shrink from branding him as being mentally crippled. Differently abled in the mental department though is a possibility.

BARRY FERGUSON - THE TRUTH

NOT for the first, and probably not the last time, I am reminded of that graveyard for English comedians, the Glasgow Empire.

Once upon a time, Mike and Bernie Winters were playing it, and opened with the wee one alone on stage telling what he tried to pass off as jokes. There was silence in the hall.

Then, enter stage left, his goofy toothed and even less funny brother. At last the silence was broken as a good old fashioned Glasgow voice boomed from the gods...awe naw! There's two of them.

What brought the hoary old, though true, tale of the music halls to my mind, was an interview conducted by one of the best and most accomplished sportswriters on any of the so-called heavies, Alan Patullo of the Scotsman.

Sir Bruce, as he is known with great affection among the hack pack, was following up the interview Barry Ferguson gave on BBC Radio Scotland which was interpreted by many as an indication he wished to return to play for Scotland.

Two of the folk Patullo interviewed were Tam Ferry and Hamish Husband, described as Tartan Army spokesmen. My reaction was predictable.

AWE NAW! THERE'S TWO OF THEM.

It would appear one favoured Ferguson's return from international exile, while the other did not. Who was for, and who against, is unimportant.

However it did raise one question about the Tartan Army. Is it now split? And if so, which is the official wing and which the provisional?

That's a joke guys. Honest!

There are though more important questions to be asked about the whole sorry affair and the vilification which has come Ferguson's way since his announcement that, no, he did not wish to play for Scotland agan.

For a start, and despite clear and unabiguous comments to the contrary, there are those who seem to believe the final decision rested not with Ferguson, but with his manager at Birmingham City, Alex McLeish. This suggestion is absolute bunkum and balderdash and may even constitute a defamation of big Eck.

Something  I am sure he and his m'learned friends are keeping a close eye on.

I missed the radio interview, but on reading its content felt that any story claiming what Ferguson said laid the groundwork for an international return, was grossly overstating the case.

One senior colleague said he initially agreed, but went on to say that when he took the time to actually listen to the broadcast, his feeling was the player wanted to don the dark blue  again, and that I may review my view by listening to it.

Always willing to take advice from such a respected source, I got a pal to work the internet for me and tuned in. Ah, the wonders of this modern age.

However, my view remained unaltered, especially as I had spoken to someone who had talked to Ferguson and found the player saying he was bemused by all the fuss.

At this point arms and legs grew onto the story. Some said he would return, and others weren't so sure. I remained commited to a view formed in the summer, when a mutual friend visited Ferguson and told me he was veering to concentrating on his club.

It was a story which I wrote for one national Sunday newspaper in July, and which appeared around ten days before Ferguson's decision was announced.

Where BBC Television's Reporting Scotland got their statement that Ferguson had kept Scotland waiting for a decision since February, goodness only knows. An early Christmas cracker perhaps?

Frankly, I can well understand why Ferguson did not want to put himself in the firing line again, for even when he was at his best for Scotland - and that was pretty good -  there were many in the Tartan Army who held him in low regard.

I even saw one newspaper this week refer to him as 'the crab' after his style. Actually I have never heard him called that, though I remember sitting in the manager's office at Old Trafford with Ron Atkinson, who told me that's what some fans called Ray Wilkins. And it wasn't meant as a compliment.

Ray Wilkins, for goodness sake. Even my noted tolerance is stretched by that sort of rubbish. Anyone who could not appreciate the way Wilkins and Ferguson's style was based on the first rule of the game, keeping possession, should never be allowed into watch football again.

Ferguson also very often put his future fitness on the line for Scotland. I recall sitting in a hotel in Iceland eight years ago as he spoke to Sunday newspaper reporters about his pelvic problems.

It was the day before a vital quailifer and he revealed how he had taken as many painful, but eventually pain killing injections, as was allowed. His graphic description of what this entailed - and where - brought a tear to a glass eye.

Therefore, in order to continue to rally to his country's colours, he was stuffing pain killers down his throat to such an extent that he had almost permanent stomach problems. That was what he was willing to go through to play for Scotland.

Yet, wherever I wherever I travelled  to report on Rangers- with the noteable exception of Inverness - and despite the fact he was Scotland's captain, Ferguson was singled out for a particularly virulent form of abuse.

My memory stretches back to away games involving Celtic and Rangers at a time when Billy McNeill, Danny McGrain, Roy Aitken, Paul Lambert, Eric Caldow and John Greig were among the revered names who were captain of club and country, and I have no memory of them being on the receiving end of such taunts and hatred.

The comments attached to the many newspaper online versions of the story about Fergsuon's decision also reveal a hostility towards him by many members of the Tartan Army. It's a mystery to me.

Of course they will point to the Boozegate scandal and the player's antics at Hampden a few days later. What he did at Hampden was stupid, childish and indefensible.

As for the events at Cameron House on the return from a whipping in Holland. Well, the exact truth of the circumstances surrounding them has never been fully explained. So let me set the record straight on why the then manager George Burley should shoulder some of the blame.

When the squad arrived back in Glasgow, it was actually officially disbanded at the airport. Those who wished to go their own way were free to do so. The schedule was for the squad to re-assemble again at Cameron house at tea time on the Sunday evening.

The mistake Burley made was in adding that anyone who wanted to go straight to Cameron House could do so, and that food and drink would be provided. The mistake Fergie made was in chosing that option.

Had he headed home, or into town to any of the places where he would have been made welcome and been able to relax away from prying eyes, nobody would have been any the wiser.

 Who knows what those members of the disbanded squad may or may not have got up to when they headed in whatever direction they chose.

The fact remains though, that Ferguson broke no rules and defied no curfew. That was never properly explained at the time. Instead, the media feeding frenzy broke, with Ferguson torn apart.

What is also not known is Walter Smith's reaction to the original outcry. My information is that he was far from happy with the then Rangers captain being thrown to the wolves, but, with Scotland involved in another match, sagely kept his counsel.

Whatever he may or may not have planned to say to Ferguson, and publicly comment, when his captain returned to Murray Park on the Friday, became irrelevant due to what the player did at Hampden on the Wednesday. The ground had been cut from under Smith's feet and he was rightly furious.

The Ibrox captaincy was stripped from Ferguson and he was told he would never again play for Rangers. Smith later softened and Ferguson returned as Rangers won the title, but at the end of the season he left for Birmingham.

It is a measure of his dedication to his country and his professionalism, that Ferguson  played for the national team under Craig Brown, Berti Vogts, Walter Smith and Alex McLeish without any hint of scandal or problem.

It is a measure of the Tartan Army's appreciation of football, that so many of them never wanted him in the Scotland team, even when when he was at the peak of his game, and captaining club and country.

And when it comes to those two Tartan Army spokesmen. Well, let's just say that if the Glasgow Empire was still on the go they'd get a lot more laughs than Mike and Bernie Winters did.

SPL BOSSES STUFF RANGERS AGAIN

THE names at the top of the Scottish Premier League may have changed, but one thing which remains a constant is the way Rangers are treated by this organisation.

Lex ''Two Carat'' Gold is no longer the SPL executive chairman and Ian Blair is no longer the head honcho's right hand man.

However, the new top man, executive chairman, Ralph Topping and his sidekick, chief executive, Neil Doncaster, don't seem any more capable of providing a level playing field for their champions than their predecessors were.

Witness the hand the SPL have dealt Rangers when the fixtures were put together. I hesitate to say they were planned, for if they were then more serious accusations may have been bandied about.

Though there be some people out there who choose to take a hard line.

I could never go along with any conspiracy theory regarding what Rangers must face in the period between now and the first week in December when the Champions League group schedule ends. The facts though, speak for themselves.

This weekend has Rangers making the trip to to the north east to face Aberdeen before they entertain Bursaspor in the Champions League on Wednesday, followed by a noon kick off on Saturday, away to Hearts at Tynecastle, always one of the toughest trips for the Old Firm.

And so it goes on. Before Valencia arrive in Glasgow for the match on Wednesday 20 October, Rangers are away to Motherwell, and after the Valencia encounter they must travel across the city to Parkhead for the first Old Firm game of the season.

They prepare for the visit of Manchester United with a journey to Ayrshire and a match against Kilmarnock, and follow the meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson's team by being sent to another of the toughest of away grounds, Tannadice and an SPL meeting with Dundee United.

It almost beggars belief. But no, it's true. That isn't the end of it either. At least Rangers are home before their long and difficult journey to Turkey, and  the very outer edge of Europe for a clash with Bursaspor which could well decide whether they make it through to the last 16 of the Champions League, or qualify for the Europa Cup.

However, when the weary travellers arrive back in Scotland, just guess what faces them? That's correct, another away game. Not just any old journey either, but the longest one possible as they hit the trail to the Highland capital and a match against Inverness Caley.

This is just the latest in a long line of what many people see as an SPL bias against Rangers.

For instance, for seven of the last ten seasons Rangers have been forced to visit a club for a third match after the split, something which incurred the wrath of Walter Smith towards the end of last season.

Smith said at the time that Rangers would be writing to the SPL to request that someone explain it all, and when some Sunday reporters asked the question of SPL officials they were, according to one colleague, subjected to such a mind boggling barrage of mumbo jumbo that they were completely confused.

That does not surprise me as I recall one telephone conversation I had with Ian Blair when his management-speak was so bewildering and lacking in clarity I thought I had dialled David Brent at The Office.

Blair it seems, is no longer in such a powerful position, and if true that is a good thing, while the departure of Gold - a man whose stewardship as chairman of Hibs co-incided with a terrible time for that club - appeared to be good news too, as did the arrival of Doncaster.

But the fixtures foisted on Rangers around their Champions League dates by the SPL makes me resort to that old line about only the names having been changed.

To quote from the official website of another Glasgow club - surely no fair minded man etc etc..........

Now this old observer is not suggesting Rangers should have been handed six easy home matches on the weekends after their midweek European adventures.

However, just a single solitary home match to follow European weeks is just not even handed. It does not present a level playing field.

If, at the end of the season, Rangers lose the title, and they look back on points dropped on away trips in the aftermath of Champions League action, there will be more rancour.

And, if they have to make a difficult third trip to a tough venue for the eighth time in eleven seasons after the split, then any complaints they may make will surely be justified.

Topping and Doncaster are at the moment engaged on a charm offensive, having taken a squad of daily newspapers out for a curry last week, with a gaggle of the Sundays due for a feed from them soon.

It seems they are trying to pave the way for a favourable press for plans for reconstruction they are believed to be on the brink of making public, with a 14-team SPL thought to be the favoured option.

Just how many away games they may wish to force Rangers to play in any new-look SPL is anybody's guess.

THE REAL NEIL LENNON

ONE of the reasons why I find Neil Lennon such an engaging character is how his flashes of honesty can wrong-foot you.

One such occasion was when I gave him an ''out'' when interviewing him in Denmark after he had played in an already qualified Celtic side, beaten 3-1 by FC Copenhagen in a Champions League dead rubber.

Lennon was having none of my suggestion that it was hard for a team to peak when the job had already been done. Instead he was brutally honest in the way he was critical of the team's performance on that cold wet December night in 2006.

Now, cast your mind back to just over three years before that, to May 2003, and the bitter twisted view taken by Chris Sutton when he unleashed what many believed was a libellous rant the day Rangers beat Dunfermline 6-1 at Ibrox, while Celtic could only win 4-0 at Kilmarnock - missing a penalty.

Those results, on Helicopter Sunday Mark One, meant  Rangers won the SPL Championship - the 50th time the Ibrox club had been crowned kings of Scottish football.

Sutton's remarks, live on television, and for which he never apologised personally and without reservation, were to the effect that Dunfermline had lain down to Rangers.

The Fife club's manager, Jimmy Calderwood, board and players were advised of their right to recourse to m'learned friends, but chose not to.

What also emerged at the time was a propoganda deluge, claiming  Rangers only won the title because Celtic had been distracted by their run to Seville and their losing appearance in the UEFA Cup Final.

Such was the extent of this non-stop barrage in newspapers and on the airwaves, those with Celtic DNA tried to make everyone believe Celtic winning nothing was preferable to Rangers not only taking the title, but making it a clean sweep of honours, for a seventh Treble.

Somehow it even managed to plant some sort of seed in the mind of Rangers manager, Alex McLeish, who later cited Celtic's European involvement as being a factor in the title ending at Ibrox.

Now fast forward to Lennon's press conference with Sunday newspapers on the Friday before the first week of this season's Champions League campaign.

The Celtic manager was asked about how Celtic's absence from European football would impact , and perhaps boost, his team's SPL chances, with the reporter who asked the question reminding Lennon of what McLeish had said.

However, Lennon, with a flash of that honesty which helps make me find him so engaging, not only shot this down, but became the first person associated with Celtic to give Rangers their long overdue due for winning the 2003 Championship.

Big Eck, as Lennon referred to him, had been wrong to belittle his own team's achievment by citing Seville, and, also according to the Parkhead manager, it was quite an achievement, given the calibre of the Celtic team McLeish's men pipped at the post.

A week later and Lennon again refused to duck a contentious issue when confronted by daily hacks interviewing him on his 100th day as Celtic manager.

The elephant in the room during each of those days had been Lennon's admission in his own book, that he suffers from depression.

One cowardly Silly Billy of a so-called reporter had tried to be a smart arse in the way he alluded to it when he wrote about Lennon's state of mind in the wake of Celtic's Euro exit. I felt incensed at this shabby treatment.

The Daily Record's Hugh Keevins, though, is no coward. Hughie is always up front and never afraid to step into the firing line to ask the difficult questions. And they don't come any more awkward than asking a man to discuss his mental health in front of the nation's media.

Lennon, wrong-footed everyone by neither brushing the politely framed question aside, or growling at the questioner. Instead he took the opportunity to confront the elephant in the room and remove its tusks.

Lennon spoke of everyone having some cross to bear, and this was his, and went on to say that since becoming Celtic manager he had not had time to feel depressed.

It was a bravura performance by Lennon and Keevins, and did much to enhance the reputation of both in their fields, unlike the view taken by many of the Silly Billy and his sneaky sniping.

Of course Lennon isn't everyone's cup of tea, and during his award winning seasons at the heart of the Celtic midfield for Martin O'Neill and Gordon Strachan there were many of a Parkhead persusion who questioned his contribution.

The same people are now less than happy with his appointment as manager.Though, as many of these folk also did not like Strachan, because of his lack of a Celtic background, despite his three-in-a-row achievment , it may be safe to say you cannot please some of the people any of the time.

It is easier to see why Lennon's reputation is lower across the city with those who follow Rangers, with many of them citing an alleged rant at them during an Old Firm clash at Ibrox.

Certainly Lennon has behaved with less than dignity during some high tension head-to-heads with the team he loves to best the most. But that's in the heat of battle.

Away from it he is different, and there was even the infamous occasion when O'Neill grabbed him round the neck after Rangers had won at Ibrox, and led him on a walk of defiance to the Celtic supporters, when Lennon looked both bemused an uncomfortable.

No doubt there will be other times when he does himself less than justice when the battle fever is on him.

However, none of that can take away from what I have found to be his honesty, and for being the first man from Celtic to admit that Alex McLeish's Rangers deserved to win the SPL Championship in May 2003.

THE REAL HUNS

THERE is a marvellous part of Paul Brickhill's wonderful biography of Sir Douglas Bader, 'Reach For The Sky,' which recalls when the Battle of Britain fighter pilot hero is being questioned by a German officer.

It is just after Bader became a POW, and the German adopts a softy-softy approach, saying to Bader that he knows the British always call them, Jerries.

Bader, always pugnacious, quickly interjects and corrects his interrogator by saying: "No we don't. We call you Huns."

Which gives a perfect example of just who or what Huns historically are. There is a long history behind this term, and those who bandy it about as a jibe at Rangers and their supporters are clearly ingnorant of that history.

In the ranks of the ignorant I include the editor of the Scotsman,  John McLennan . His newspaper was deluged by complaints after a cartoon appeared featuring the German Pope waving to Rangers fans in the aftermath of the draw at Old Trafford, and remarking that it was a good day all round for Huns.

McLennan was so under siege  he took a step unusual for an editor-in-chief of publishing a signed apology. It was however, weasel-worded, as he admitted to being a Rangers fan, brought up in the West of Scotland who was frequently referred to as a Hun by his Celtic supporting friends, and insisted he took no offence from it.

WELL HE SHOULD!

And indeed he would if he knew the history of the word in the 20th century. What will surprise all but the most erudite of readers, is that it was first used in July 1900 by Kaiser Wilhelm 111 as he spoke to German troops being sent to China to put down the Boxer Rebellion.

What Kaiser Bill said was this: "Prisoners will not be taken. Once, a thousand years ago the Huns, under their king, Attila, made a name for themselves, one still potent in legend and tradition. May you in this way make the name of Germany remembered for a thousand years, so that no Chinaman will ever again dare to even squint at a German."

There followed a period of German barbarism when the Germans, taking the Kaiser at his word, perpetrated the first genocide of the 20th century, as a forerunner to the Holocaust.

It was during 1904 in German south west Africa - what we know today as Nambia - that General Lothar von Trotha slaughtered 60,000 of the Herero tribe and 8,000, from a population of 10,000, of the Nama tribe.

This led to the Germans becoming widely known as Huns, an epithet which gained even more of a common currency ten years later at the outbreak of the Great War.

During the Second World War, Nazi Germany perfected the barbaric techniques of mass extermination, putting six million Jews to death, plus uncounted millions of Romany people, Slavs, and even their own countrymen, should they be unfortunate enough to suffer any mental illness, or be homosexual.

Huns, in the tradition of  Attila, indeed, but to an extent the Mongolian warlord could never have imagined.

It was a word still  used into the mid 1970s when that fine and learned Scot, Jeremy Issacs, produced the definitive television history of the 1939-45 fight for the survival of civilisation against the Huns, The World At War.

Many of those interviewed, in a series which is often re-run on the History , Yesterday or Discovery channels, refer to those from Nazi Germany as Huns, just as Bader did when confronted with one.

Therefore those who use it to describe Rangers and the club's supporters are either extremely ignorant, or believe the Ibrox club and its  supporters can be compared to the SS, the Gestapo and all the others who were responsible for genocide.

Brian Reade of the Daily Mirror is another who is either a fool or a bigot after he tried to be a smart alec by using it, referring to Rangers , in a recent column in that once great but now laughable rag.

One man who would not tolerate it being used was the wee guy who I thought was one of the best things ever to happen to Scottish football, the fellow who rescued Celtic from oblivion, the wonderful Fergus McCann.

I always thought Celtic as a club were at their best and most admirable when McCann was calling the shots and a good pal of mine, Jim Cullen, a Celtic supporter who owned The Montrose Bar, where I often shared a shandy with Billy McNeill and other Parkhead legends, idolised wee Fergus.

Of course there may be many with Celtic DNA who disagree. Who think McCann was not as great a Celt as I and my pal big Jim believed.

However, I am sure there are others, like so many of the Celtic supporters who have been my friends down through the years, and who may not have been completely aware of just what the history of the epithet, Huns is.

They know now!

Though I am just as sure there are others who won't take a blind bit of notice of this wee lesson to let them know the history, and will continue to apply the the insult, Huns to Rangers and the club's fans.

Fergus McCann had his own insult for those people. He called them bigots.
 

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.

SCOTLAND'S PRIDE

THERE are times when I am immensely proud to be a Scot, and this is one such time.

Of course, there are other occasions when some of my countrymen - the Jacobites of the Tartan Army for instance - make me lower my voice, lest people recognise my guid Scots tongue.

This week though I will be talking with the volume at full blast, and I will be puffing out my chest with pride for my wee country.

Pride at the openness and tolerance of a nation which is throwing open its doors and rolling out the red carpet to welcome the leader of no more than 18per cent of Scotland 5.1million population.

A tiny minority of a sect, ruled over by a foreign price from a foreign land, who is chosen in secret, according to ancient ceremony.

It says a great deal about Scotland, and how tolerant of others and their foreign mores we truly international Scots are. A Man's A Man For A' That, at its very best.

And the welcome being laid on surely knocks into a cocked hat Jack McConnell's stupid claim about sectarianism and bigotry being Scotland's secret shame.

No wonder wee Jack achieved what many thought was the impossible when he actually managed to lose an election for Labour in Scotland.

Scotland's welcome for the leader of one of the country's minorities, also shames the irrational rantings of that wee music maker, James McMillan.

Though, compared to, for instance, George Gershwin, McMillan isn't even second rate. Listen to Rhapsody In Blue or Porgy and Bess, lyrics by brother, Ira and you'll see what I mean.

Of course it could well be McMillan relishes - and perhaps even needs - the publicity he gets when he spouts his nonsense to a tame media.

So, at a time when the nation is having to tighten its belt, I welcome this week's visit, even though, at a conservative estimate it will cost the taxpayer £20M - not including the policing and other security costs.

 As a guideline to these, the security at the G8 Conference held at Gleneagles cost £72M, and the 6,000 police officers who will be on duty this week makes it the biggest security operation in Scotland since then.

The mind boggles at the sums of money involved.

But I do not object one jot to it being spent. Nor do I object to huge swathes of the nation's motorway system being closed and turned into a car park, at goodness knows what cost to Scotland's businesses.

I do not have a problem with the fact the free movement of the majority, going about their legal business, is being halted by Scotrail managing director Steve Montgomery as train services between Glasgow and Paisley and between Cumbernauld and Motherwell are suspended.

Nor I am concerned that many going to this special event in Bellahouston Park will be taken there by a one-every-four-minutes special subway service and will not have to pay a penny for the ride if they wear a wristband handed out when they pay a £20 donation to the organization which our visitor rules.

I am not even the least perturbed that because the entrace fee is called a donation and not a fee, there will be no VAT to pay to to the British government.

What does make me angry though is that if anyone exercises their democratic right to protest - just as gay rights activist Peter Thatchell plans to do when our visitor is in England - there will be the usually bellowing buffoons thundering their hate filled facist message about bigotry and Scotland's shame.

For me, that identifies these loud voices as belonging to the real bigots, who will not tolerate any view but their own, or those acting as what Lenin called, useful idiots, on their behalf.

So let the visit commence, and let all Scots from all backgrounds puff out our chests with pride at our wee country's great tolerance.

And let an Englishman and an Irishman have the last word.

Shakespeare wrote: "There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

And my favourite comedian, Dave Allen's closing line....MAY YOUR GOD GO WITH YOU.

TARTAN ARMY TERRORISTS SHAME SCOTLAND AGAIN

TAM FERRY is not a name I know too well. And I'm pretty sure there are not many readers out there who recognise the moniker.

However, it seems he is some sort of  ''spokesman''  for the Tartan Army. Funny, I thought that was Hamish Husband. But we will leave aside any possible internal wrangling.

We all know the Tartan Army. They are the geezers who berate Old Firm fans for living in the past, harping on about, and singing about the Battle of the Boyne, the Potato Famine and  IRA terrorists.

Yet these kilted buffoons get kitted out in ridiculous psuedo military attire - many Scottish soldiers in the REAL tartan Army may find this offensive - while singing about a battle in 1314 and never getting more up to date than April 1746.

Of course, in this free and democratic society, that is their right. If they want to prance around like prize prats they are perfectly at liberty to do so.

What they have no right to do is shame Scotland with their rude, boorish and entirely un-Scottish behaviour whenever the national anthem of a visiting country is played at Hampden.

They were at it again last week when their boos, jeers and catcalls echoed around the old ground when the Liechtenstein anthem was played.

The following day the president and acting chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, big bluff straight talking George Peat took them to task. At last.

But, instead of showing  contrition, the Tartan Army fired back a reply through Tam Ferry which attempted to ridicule Peat for having the temerity to launch any sort of critical comment at them .

In many ways it is hard to blame Ferry and his cohorts among this wee band of deluded Jacobites. For, for years, they have lived a charmed life with hardly a word of critical comment written or spoken about them in newspapers, radio or television.

Jim Traynor of Daily Record and BBC fame is a noteable exception, and because he has told the truth about them, has been subjected to abuse by kilted clowns in airports, on planes, and in the streets of many a foreign town when on assisgment.

Not  wee Silly Billy though. He has even been spotted on at least one occasion - Copenhagen - out on the razzle with the feathered fools and leading them in that appalling dirge which goes back to laud a battle fought 376 years before the one Rangers supporters sing about, and which he finds so offensive.

I know among the press pack I am not alone in my views about the Tartan Army's behaviour, though, Traynor apart, I am on the only journalist willing to write the views so many of my colleagues express in private, but are too cowed to express publicly, perhaps by the stifling atmosphere of politcal correctness which stifles any decent debate in this country - and by country I mean the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Therefore, I am indebted to a regular writer of letters to the Herald, Glenn Elder of Glasgow, whose latest rational contribution was published in that paper's Fans With Laptops, section on Friday.

Mr Elder wanted to know why Peat's condemnation of the Tartan Army booing the national anthem of vistors has waited so long? Why, he asked, did the SFA president not take them to task for their treatment of God Save The Queen when Northern Ireland were at Hampden?

It is a very good question.

 Mr Elder went on to remind readers that several years ago he wrote to the Herald over his embarrassment at hearing the German anthem booed while sitting with German friends at Hampden. He continued by correctly recalling, the following year both the French and Italian anthems were abused by the Tartan Army.

I have no doubt Mr Elder is a true Scot. A man with a partiotic pulse, but also the sort of Scot whose internationalism means he can never be as closed minded and self serving as those hordes of the Tartan Army in their psuedo militaristic uniforms.

Tam Ferry and any other so called  ''spokesman'' for them would be well advised to remember another, and much more proud chapter in this once great nation's history. It is called The Scottish Enlightenment.

JACKO'S TOP CLASS EXCLUSIVE AND A SILLY BILLY

STAND up Keith Jackson, and take a bow for the best Scotland exclusive since...well, since your last one.

Now, as anyone knows, I think the Daily Record - which gives a column to George Galloway - is a rotten rag, and its plunging circulation figures show you all agree.

But credit where credit is due, and Keith Jackson's back page lead ,which lifted the lid off Craig Levein's both barrels rant at James McFadden and Kris Boyd at half time in that disgrace of a match against Liechtenstein, was a rare insight. Top class reporting.

The fact that Levein has not been out of the traps like a Shawfield odds on favourite to rubbish the story, merely serves to confirm just how copper bottom the tale is. Though I know, as any hack worth two bob also knows, that Jacko, however Wacko, would never have written it had he not been certain of of his facts.

Whatever happens now, and however many times however many folk may try to deny the story's authenticity, nobody will believe them. The tale is set in stone.

Which leaves Levein with a problem. For whatever is said inside the dressing room is meant to stay there. Its sanctity should equal that of the confessional. Or least, that's what every manager from Bill Nicholson to Craig Brown that I have dealt with has told me.

What Levein now faces is a squad full of players who will be worrying when a dip in form sees them next in line for the treatment at half time, and public humiliation.

There was no surprise in the news that Levein had borrowed Sir Alex Ferguson's hairdryer and turned it on Faddy. Plus Boyd.

After all, the Scotland manager had made his feelings about McFadden known when explaining why he was axed for the game in Lithuania, and again, in his post Liechtenstein match press conference  ,he put the boot into the Birmingham City man.

In doing so he was ignoring the wisdom of, and precedent set by, every Scotland manager I have dealt with professionally - a list which goes back to Ally MacLeod.

There would have been no chance of any of them - including the giants who have held the position, Jock Stein, Craig Brown, Walter Smith and Alex McLeish - making such a schoolboy mistake.

Levein may yet live to regret what he appears to have allowed to happen to McFadden, and to a lesser extent Boyd, and I will be surprised if he doesn't have to field calls from Big Eck and Gordon Strachan, two players who were always publicly protected at club and country level by managers of such stature as Stein and Sir Alex Ferguson.

None of which is - nor should it be - of any concern to the Daily Record's Keith Jackson. He got the exclusive, and that's what he is there for.

But, while doffing my old reporter's fedora to Wacko, what can we possibly say about the Silly Billy at the Record's rival?

For some guy at the Sun actually wrote that the Record was wrong, on the morning after the match, to describe Scotland's performance as an ABSOLUTE DISGRACE.

At least it was the wee Silly Billy's name on it. Though Levein himself could not have penned a better or more bitter piece of propoganda.

At least though Levein is a proper manager - if perhaps not as good a one as he thinks he is. For this particular sad wee Silly Billy is really just as wannabee who once allowed his pipe dream to get so much the better of him that he was spotted sitting on the bench next to Des McKeown, when the now Scotland spy was the manager of Stenhousmuir.

Not that I would wish any reader to take this as an attack on the Sun's sports section, which it most certainly is not. Ian King, the head of sport, does a superb job, and there are lots of fine and talented scribes to be found in his section.

Roger Hannah, Robert Grieve and Andy Devlin are Three Musketeers of Dumas class. It's just a pitty they have to share a page with such a Silly Wee Billy.

This is the man who suggested the Scots were gung ho at Hampden. Gung ho? With a back four against a solo striker, plus Lee McCulloch sitting in, five to ten yards in front of that rearguard.

This is the man who, in Thursday's Sun drivelled that he was only guessing that Levein might regret being talked out of sticking with the shape of his team in Lithuania.

Guessing? I can see he can't write. But can't he read either? After all, Levein said just that within an hour of the final whistle on Tuesday, and his comments were plastered all over every paper in the land, including the one from which Silly Billy steals a wage.

But, not content with telling us, on the Sun's sports pages, what was wrong with any critical comment about what good sound, solid and experienced observers reckoned was Scotland's worst competitive performance at Hampden in half a century, Wee Silly Billy then invaded the serious part of the paper to lecture us on Koran burning in America.

As a former Sun columnist might have written....YOU COULDN'T MAKE HIM UP.

SCOTLAND'S SHAME

THE timing of the Daily Mail's splash revealing there are 30,000 Scots off work suffering from depression could not have been better.

That's just about the number who sat and suffered at Hampden through the worst Scottish performance on home soil in a competive match for over half a century.

And that's not just my view, but also the firm opinion of two even more senior and experienced sports writers - proud Scots both.

However, what is even worse than how badly the Scots played is the attitude being ingrained in a small sect of the younger generation of hacks, perhaps in no small way due to the drip feed of comments from manager Craig Levein.

One of them, even before the match, and reflecting on what had happened in Lithuania, insisted that we just didn't have the players and weren't good enough.

Which sounded suspiciously like the defeatist mantra Bertri Vogts used to preach after another of his blunders had seen the Scots humiliated.

It is also at complete odds with reality.

Walter Smith instilled an immediate improvement in the national side when he took over, and in one match, against a nation comparable in lowly status to Liechtenstein, The Faroes, sent out a team which won 6-0.

Of that side, five started under Levein against Liechtenstein, Davie Weir, Darren Fletcher, James McFadden, Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller. And, when you consider Paul Hartley, who played against the Faroes, was in Levein's squad, while Allan McGregor in place of Craig Gordon hardly weakens the side, it is interesting.

Scotland were five ahead by half time in that match, with all the first half scorers, Fletcher, Faddy, Boyd and Miller, in action this week.

What followed that extremely impressive performance and confidence boosting trashing of the minnows, was a midweek trip to Lithuania and a 2-1 win for Smith's team.

Fast forward a couple of years to September 2008, a mere two years ago, and the venue is Paris, where Alex McLeish masterminded a team containing no fewer than SEVEN of the same starters against Liechtenstein. The result a 1-0 win over the French and what, for me, was Scotland's greatest ever single triumph.

Therefore, if Smith could do it with so many of the same players against the Faroese and then in Lithuania, and McLeish could manage it against the more formidable French forces in Paris, with even more of the men at Levein's disposal, the question is, why can't the current Scotland manager?

During Levein's reign we have seen an inept first half in a friendly against the Czech Republic almost ignored by the critics after a second half goal gave the Scots a win, followed by a serious seeeing to by Sweden in another friendly, a poor, plodding and unimaginative goalless draw in Lithuania - where Smith won - and then the apology of the show against Lichtenstein.

After that Swedish flop I called attention to the danger of Levein's remarks that the game had been no more than a pre season friendly and didn't matter. It did, as all international results go towards FIFA ratings which, in turn, are part of the calculations when nations are seeded for the draw for qualifying campaigns.

After the snore draw in Kaunus, Levein seemed to be upset at even mild critical comment and, according to Scotland's biggest selling national daily newspaper, had a bit of a pop at the Tartan Army.

Then last night he commented , he had said about Lithuania, that he set out the team to play in a certain way, but changed that for Liechtenstein, against his better judgement. He went on to ponder there was  maybe a lesson for him there, adding that he took a risk.

A RISK?

With a back four, plus Lee McCulloch patrolling no more than between five and ten yards in front of the defence as added insurance.

Against Liechtenstien? At Hampden? Where such giants as Spain, Holland, Germany and Italy have all either been seen off or given the fright of their lives, and where Walter Smith's Scots beat France.

Given what he said we must therefore believe that had Levein not gone against his better judgement, and instead stuck with the way he set out his team in Lithuania, Scotland would have faced Lichtenstein, with Scott Brown joining McCulloch protecting a four man rearguard in a five strong midfield, with a lone striker.

Against Lichtenstein, a nation with a population smaller than the crowd at Hampden, and who included an office worker and a student in their team of odds and sods.

Now I know there are many out there who really do not give a hoot about the Scotland team. Rangers supporters, turned off by the Tartan Army's hatred of all things red, white and blue, and Celtic fanatics who feel more at home backing the Republic of Ireland.

Both sides of the Old Firm divide are wrong. If you are Scottish, then the Scottish team is the national side you should be supporting.

I've got no problems with Rangers followers who see themselves as stoutly British, and therefore also wish well to the English team, or with any Bhoys who feel they have an Irish background and therefore take an interest in the Republic.

But first and foremost all Scots should, at international level, support Scotland. It matters. And it is why, everything that has happened since Craig Levein took over my nation's national team makes me  feel like joining those 30,000 who are too depressed to work.
.
......AND THERE'S MORE

Where LeggoLand goes first, others soon follow.

For it would seem a whole host of columnists on some of the nation's daily and Sunday newspapers are having their agendas set by what they appear to have read here.

For instance... today, and after almost a week of silence in the national press about Judge Andrew Blake's sin of ommision regarding the 1996 IRA bomb which devasted Manchester, there was finally a reference to it in The Herald.

It only took 48 hours from the time I called attention to how ludicrous Judge Andrew Blake's rant was, before  a national Scottish newspaper also pointed it out.

And last Sunday in the Sunday Mail not one, but TWO columnists on the sports pages, followed in my footsteps by attacking Dermond Desmond's latest bleating about the Old Firm joining the English Premiership.

The next day, in The Herald, the always highly readable Michael Grant made it the subject of his column, even going so far as to point out - as I did - how seemingly pathetic it is for the Irishman who owns a Scottish club, to discuss its business only in England.

That's not all. Cast your mind back to what I commented about the late Jimmy Reid and how crazy it was for anyone to claim his speech to students at Glasgow University was the best since the Gettysburg Address. I added that almost any of Winston Churchill's great speeches were better.

It took just a couple of days for an old pal and sparring partner, Michael Kelly, in his column in the Scotsman, to attempt, as I did, to dispel the Reid myth.

One time Celtic director and former Lord Provost of Glasgow, Kelly, even got close enough to my thinking, to invoke Churchill's name, mentioning his Iron Curtain masterpiece.

Now, either a lot of the nation's opinion formers are reading LeggoLand and following in the trail I am blazing, or amazingly we all seem to agree.

In which case some advice to the man from the Herald, those two Sunday Mail columnists, and the two Michaels, Grant and Kelly. See a doctor. Or maybe I should.

JUDGE ANDREW BLAKE and the IRA BOMB

DO you remember when judges seemed to live in some sort of hermetically sealed wee world of their own, cut off from reality?

You know the sort of thing - ''Television?''

''Yes, M'Lud, a new eletctronic device for the entertainment of the lower classes. ''

''The Beatles?''

''A popular musical quarter who find favour with the younger element of the population, M'Lud.''

We all thought their sort of had been consigned to the dustbin of history, and that  the men and women who sit on the benches of the courts throughout this United Kingdom today, have some sort of contact with reality, as well as a deep sense of history.

But we have been wrong. Massively, comprensively and unerringly wrong, wrong, wrong.

And if you do not believe me then consider the words of Judge Andrew Blake as he sent to jail - where they belong - 11 of the thugs who caused violence of the streets on Manchester in May 2008.

It was, according to this prize prat, the worst destruction visited upon Manchester since the Nazi war machine rained bombs on it during the Blitz.

Now, let's pause for a breath, while we take in the scale of such an observation. While we do so, it may be worth considering why, in the three days since he blundered, nobody in the Scottish media has taken Judge Andrew Blake to task for his amazing lack of historical perspective.

And the sin of omission.

I would like to think it is a combination of those who run Scotland's newspapers being just as ignorant as the judge. For surely there can be no other motive for the printed press, plus the broadcast media the length and breadth of Scotland, failing to point out just what poppycock Blake's ill researched and historically inaccurate rant was.

It was  shortly before mid-day on June 15, 1996, the day before Father's Day, that a 3000lb bomb, planted by the IRA, exploded and ripped the heart out of Manchester, injuring 212 innocent men, women and children.

Mancunians - and I know many having spent much time in their splendid city - still look back in wonder at the fact nobody was killed, calling it The Miracle of Manchester.

The cowardly IRA bombers planted their massive bomb close to the always busy Arndale Shopping centre. The 3000lb bomb so lovingly prepared by the IRA terrorists was the largest device exploded on mainland Britain in peacetime.

That bomb was nearly TEN times BIGGER than anything the German bombers carried during the Blitz.

Such was the complete carnage that IRA blockbuster bomb caused , buildings which were not reduced to rubble, were in such a bad state they had to be demolished.

A total of 400 businesses were affected, with 160 of them so badly hit they were unable to resume trading.

The initial rebuilding took over three years, with  some redevelopment going on until 2005, at a total cost of £1.2BILLION.

Insurers paid out £600M and the 212 victims of the IRA bomb blast received a total of almost £1.5M in compensation for their injuries, many of them horrific.

Yet Judge Andrew Blake, blithely ignored all of this, to jump from thousands of Nazi German bombers raining their destruction on Didsbury, Prestwich, Sale, Altrincham and Trafford Park, to  a few hundred soccer thugs on the rampage.

Surely it could not have been a lack of knowledge. For, if anyone should know the history it is Judge Andrew Blake, born on 18 August 1946, and educated first at Ampleforth College and then Hertford College, before graduating from Oxford with an MA in history.

That's right....HISTORY! As the incomporable Richard Littlejohn might say  - you couldn't make it up.

Especially when, after being called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1971, he moved to practice in Manchester in 1972, where he remained active until being made a circuit judge in 1999.

Therefore he was active there when the 1996 IRA bomb shook the city of Manchester to its very foundations.

Maybe the fact that Greater Manchester Police failed to put anyone in the dock - there have been no convictions and , according to that Force it is now extremely unlikely there ever will be - allowed the fact of a 3000lb IRA bomb exploding, injuring 212 people, causing £1.2BILLION worth of damage which took nearly a decade to put right, to slip completely out of Judge Andrew Blake's mind.

If that is the case - and any other explaination does not bear thinking about - then it is time for the authorities to take a close look at the condition of 64-year-old Judge Andrew Blake's memory, in order to make sure he is still mentally nimble enough to sit in judgement in a court of law.

The IRA bomb of 15 June, 1996 was the worst destruction inflicted on Manchester since the Nazi Blitz, followed by the 1981 Moss Side riots, when police were firebombed in a 48-hour period when law and order teetered on the brink of oblivion in that fine old Victorian City.

The cowardly actions of those few on the streets of Manchester in May 2008, were shocking. But they fall way short of the terrorist IRA and its 3000lb bomb in that city in 1996.

And if that - and Moss Side - had slipped Judge Andrew Blake's memory, well .....he kens noo!

ARCHIBALD GERARD KANE, LLOYDS AND RANGERS

WHEN even such a clever man as Alistair Darling admits to being hoodwinked by them, then you know just what they are. Bankers!

But there is something about one particular banker which perplexes me. Why is the man responsible at board level for the activites of Lloyds Bank in Scotland so seemingly reticent?

And why is the nation's media so shy about telling us the life story of Archibald Gerard Kane, the banker who can call the shots over the debt owed to his bank by Rangers?

After all Archie, as he's known in that ''bible'' of the famous, Who's Who, or Archibald on the Lloyds website, is a classic rags to riches story. The sort of' '' lad of pairts'' tale usually so beloved by our newspapers and broadcasting organizations.

And, given his relationship with that other great Scottish institution, Rangers, I find it hard to comprehend just what is going on.

On  numerous occasions I have mentioned this to a number of senior people in journalism, and none of them has been able to give me an answer for the silence.

So, for their benefit, and for the information of those interested in such stories, here is what I know about Archie Gerard Kane, as his entry in Who's Who calls him.

Kane, it tells us, was born in the 16th June, 1952, and his parents were Archie and Rose . He was, by his own admission, from a poor background.

In an interview with Alasdair Northrop in the serious and respected Insider Magazine on June 11th this year, Kane reveals how, for the first  six years of his life he and his parents shared one room in an aunt's house in Hamilton.

Clearly he still feels an affinity with Lanarkshire as his public address is listed as being Bellshill.

Those humble origins were nothing out of the ordinary in those days, as I grew up with my mum and dad in a room and kitchen in a Maryhill tenement in the 50s and 60s until I was 12 and we moved next door to a two room and kitchen.

Therefore I understand his comment about those years of: ''When you are young you don't think much about it.''

Quite right!

In the interview he went on to praise mother, Rose, as the driving force in his life, adding:''My mother encouraged me school-wise, and to go to university. My dad did everything from being a bus driver, to a wages clerk on a construction site and was well read and knowledgeable about politics and history.''

For the rest, the interview , as you would expect given the nature of the Insider Magazine, is as dry as dust, concentrating on the world of high finance and banking.

Certainly Kane is a man well qualified to talk about such subjects, despite having no banking qualifications, having studied accountancy at Glasgow University, emerging with a BAacc.

For, as well as being the executive director on the Lloyds Board, responsible for Scotland, Kane has 41 different relationships with his fellow board members in nine different organizations across six different industries.

Who could possibly argue against such a busy bee being worth the few quid short of £1.5M he trousered last year from a bank which was rescued by the taxpayers?

As I said, a classic rags to riches story, the sort usually documented in minute detail in newspapers and on radio and television in Scotland.

Yet, despite extensive research, there appears to be nothing  known about Kane since he and his mum and dad moved out his aunt's house when he was six in 1958, until he graduated from Glasgow University, probably some time around 1972-ish.

Maybe some of his old school pals or fellow undergraduates, who sunk of a few pints with him in the Men's Union can fill us in. Somebody must remember him.

Strangely there are no newspaper reports of this local boy made good returning to his primary school in Hamilton as the guest of honour on prizegiving day. Nor the hint of him addressing the present day pupils at whatever secondary school where he studied so hard, encouraged by mother, Rose, to win a place at Glasgow University.

In fact Who's Who is as much in the dark about this period in the life of the man who holds sway over Rangers, and who works for a taxpayers' funded organization, as I am.

Prime minister David Cameron lists his school as we all know, as Eton, and Gordon Brown tell us he went to Kirkcaldy High School.

Tony Blair even goes so far as to list Durham Choisters School before he went to Fettes, while Nick Clegg is a product of Westminster School.

Good grief, even shamed Fred the Shred - Sir Fred Goodwin, - owns up to having gone to Paisley Grammar School.

Of course perhaps Kane is ashamed of his humble origins. After all, Edinburgh is Scotland's banking centre, and when the folk there ask what school you went to, they are trying to uncover your social status, revealed by whether or not you attended a fee paying school.

If that's the case then shame on you Archie Gerard Kane ,though I find that hard to believe of a man who, despite having come a long way has still admirably kept his Lanarkshire roots.

I know a wee bit about Lanarkshire, as my dad, Andrew was born and bred in Coatbridge, before having the great good sense to marry a Maryhill lassie and move there.

So I know only too well the obsession of Lanarkshire's young men with sport in general and football in particular. Which is why I find it strange that in Who's Who, Kane lists his hobbies as golf, tennis and ski-ing. Hardly tastes he would have cultivated growing up in Lanarkshire in the 1950s and 60s.

But then again, as former Chancellor Alistair Darling has admitted, they are slippery customers. Bankers!

ABERDEEN

IT came as no surprise to learn of an outbreak of madness on the appropriately named Aberdeen Mad website following Ricky Foster's switch to Rangers.

In fact such a reaction from the north east was as predictable as it was pathetic and just about summed up a sizeable section of those who follow Aberdeen.

It also, perhaps, illustrates just how the club has changed  from the era when it was a pleasure for any Glasgow based journalist to visit Pittodrie in the days of shrewd old Dick Donald and the friendly and intellectually formidable Chris Anderson.

Even before  Foster's move to Rangers sparked off the usual spewing of vile bile from many Dons devotees, I was pondering events at Pittodrie and trying to fathom just what was going on at a club which still appears to be living with the regret of its treatment of Jimmy Calderwood.

Firstly, there was the strange television appearance of manager Mark McGhee a week ago. McGhee appeared to be bouyed by starting the season with three straight wins, and when asked - as all SP managers were in the wake of Celtic, Motherwell and Dundee United being kicked out of Europe - how Scottish clubs could improve at that level, he launched into a strange tirade.

According to McGhee, all that is needed for success is money. It was, he insisted in what appeared to be dogmatic style, one thousand per cent down to money, adding that if he was given enough he would guarantee Aberdeen winning the Champions League.

That was indeed strange as when Rangers spending went wild they couldn't even get out of the sections, and nor could Celtic when their wage bill was higher than that of two thirds of of the Premiership teams.

Yet, in an era of Old Firm budget cuts, Alex McLeish blazed the trail as Rangers became the first Scottish team to reach the knock out stages of the Champions League, followed by Gordon Strachan's Celtic, twice, before Walter Smith steered Rangers on a march to the UEFA Cup Final.

And didn't Porto win the Champions League a mere six years ago? And without spending the sort of money in either transfer fees or wages lashed out by Dick Advocaat or Martin O'Neill.

Nearer to home Chelsea have been the big spenders of English football - before being overtaken by Manchester City. Yet we have yet to see the Champions League trophy at Stamford Bridge.

While City, whose outlay in the recently closed transfer window amounted to more than a third of all the cash spent in the Premiership, will struggle to win the English title.

McGhee's stoutly held belief  is shown to be wrong. Cash of course plays a part, but it is not, never has been, and never will be, the be all and end of all of soccer success, especially at the very top level.

Perhaps McGhee was having a bad day. Perhaps the question caught him on the hop. These things happen.

But, when McGhee's Aberdeen were beaten by Kilmarnock 24 hours after his Euro outburst, more was to follow from the Pittodrie manager.

He turned his blazing guns on an unfortunate 18-year-old striker, who had come on as a substitute for Chris Maguire and whose mistake contributed to the late Kilmarnock winner.

Mitch Megginson is the kid's name, and McGhee was reported in the local evening newspaper as saying that he hoped the player had sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling. He added , he hoped Megginson felt terrible.

It was around about then that my mind's eye conjured pictures of Dick Donald and Chris Anderson, chairman and vice chairman of a three man board at a time when Aberdeen were winning titles and cups at home and in Europe.

McGhee was a player at Pittodrie when these two giants of Aberdeen and Scottish football history were around, and I wonder if he took a moment to reflect on what their reaction may have been to his outspoken and public attack on an 18-year-old laddie.

And what they - especially old Dick, who was a true canny Aberdonian, though as hospitable a man as I have ever had the privilege of meeting - would have thought about his cash-cures-all-theory.

These are questions which Aberdeen supporters would do better to address, rather than indulging in a blind hatred at all things Rangers, and telling proud son of the Granite City, Foster that he is no longer welcome back in his home town.

I have no doubt at all just what Dick Donald and Chris Anderson's reaction to that sort of nonsense would have been.

DERMOT DESMOND

THIS is what sports writers call a ''Scotland week,'' and is something they always look forward to as a chance to break out of the same old Old Firm round of interviews.

However, suddenly Celtic's billionaire owner Dermot Desmond has put his head above the parapet to raise just about the hoariest of same old, same old chesnuts..... the Old Firm joining the English Premiership.

First things first. One of my colleagues who attends the Masters in Augusta every year always takes the opportunity to confront Desmond there - politely as he's a well brought up lad - with the request for an interview. Every year he is met with a refusal.

Perhaps Desmond prefers to speak to a soundbite chasing radio man, as opposed to a journalist who would be certain to ask penetrating and pertinent questions. I don't know the answer to that one.

What I do know is the idea of the Old Firm upping sticks, quitting Scotland and playing in the top flight in England will not happen in my lifetime.

And I aim to be around for a fair few years, despite the threat from some keyboard warrior nutter to shoot me.

It's more than a decade now since the story started gathering pace in the media south of the border, leading to the London based Sunday newspaper sports editor who was my boss badgering me for stories about it.

Now, this particular sports editor was not the one who refused to publish my eye witness account of what I saw in Manchester, just before he went on the run as the Met's Fraud Squad closed in on him.

No, this gaffer, who has deserverdly gone on to bigger and better things, was willing to listen to me. And what I told him then still holds good today.

NUMBER ONE - The English Premiership is a hugely successful league and has no need of the Old Firm to boost its financial worth.

NUMBER TWO - FIFA - not UEFA as so many of my less well informed colleagues continue to say hold sway on this matter - would not tolerate it, as it would open the floodgates for large clubs in Holland moving to Germany, Belgium to France, and Portugal to Spain, as well as Chile to Argentina etc etc.

NUMBER THREE - The clubs in the bottom half of the Premiership would hardly vote to make their own survival tougher in the that gold mine. The vote of 20-0 against the Old Firm, taken long ago, would be repeated again if taken tomorrow.

My boss told me to write just that, which I did, and on each subsequent occasion when the idea resurfaced he asked me if anything had changed, and on being told by me that it hadn't, agreed the subject wasn't worth last week's fish and chip paper.

Yet here we have Desmond, who I get the feeling likes to think of himself as a bit of a wheeler dealer on football's big stage, popping up with it again.

Sure, there may be the odd geezer south of the border, Bolton's Phil Garside was one a few months ago, who will refloat the idea, perhaps even trying to find a backdoor way in via the Championship.

NUMBER FOUR -  Championship clubs are hardly going to want to make it harder to gain entry to that Premiership pot on gold by bringing in the Old Firm as serious competition.

Which takes us back to the Celtic owner and what many may believe to be his pie-in-the-sky statement on the airwaves, and a question which many have asked over many years.

Why is it that when succcessful, high powered and extremely rich businessmen enter the world of football, they appear to leave all their business acumen behind them?

But back let's get back to where we started, and the ''Scotland week.''

And one man to give Desmond a run for his money in the last few days has been Scotland's still to be tried and tested at this level, manager Craig Levein.

His revelation that he had made an attempt to tempt Newcastle's Nigerian born striker, Shola Ameobi to become a ''Scot'' on the strength of the fact he holds a British passport amazed me on a couple of levels.

To begin with the idea that Scotland should go in search of mercenaries to join the colours appals me. It's bad enough that we take advantage of FIFA rules to cap players who were born in England - or any other country - neither of whose parents  are Scottish, and who have only one grandparent who is a Scot.

But to actively seek to cap someone who hasn't even muched a roll 'n square slice? It's almost too terrible for words.

There is though a more practical aspect to this saga which is even more worrying, and which the Scottish Football Association's PR machine - which is much more media savvy these days - has managed to divert attention from.

This problem first arose when a young reporter who was pally with Rangers' calamity captain, Lorenzo Amoruso, got the Italian, who was nowhere near good enough to play for Italy, talking on a slow news day about his desire to don the dark blue.

The FIFA rule says that if a player has lived in a country long enough and hold that's nation's passport, he qualifies to play for it.

In the peculiar case of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, this means any of the Home Countries can pick such a player.

The SFA politely declined by Amo's offer, but some time later the same hack went to Nacho Novo - there are a lot of slow news days for the tabloid headline hunters - and produced the same tale. Only the names had been changed.

By this time the excellent Gordon Smith was the SFA chief executive and he stamped on the silliness and brokered an official deal with the FA in London and its counterparts in Belfast and Cardiff, a so called gentlemen's agreement, that none of the Home Associations would take advantage of this disgraceful FIFA rule.

At the time the story was given wide ranging coverage. That means the tabloids, the middlemarket papers, the heavies, radio and television gave it prominence, not just here, but in England, Wales and Ulster too.

Granted Levein was not in charge of the Scotland team at the time, but it was a story which was hard to miss, and difficult to confuse with the one with Andy Driver at its centre, which is an entirely different matter.

Of course, none of this will matter should Scotland return from Lithuania in the early hours of Saturday morning with three European Championship qualifying points in the bag ,and then double their tally by seeing off Lichtenstein at Hampden on Tuesday night.

For me, the opening four matches must harvest at least seven points, and the best way to reach that tally is by winning the first two ties and drawing in the Czech Republic next month, as the fourth outing is when World Champions , Spain visit Hampden .

First things first, though. And who knows, after this ''Scotland week'' is finished some of my press pals may turn their attention to Dermot Desmond, and explain the facts of football life to him.