No repeat – but painful to watch

RANGERS fans think they deserve better? Spare a thought for the television viewers.

Repetition is the key to success in sport. It's the thing that separates the fluke from the class. Accordingly, it's not always an easy trick to pull off – as the new president of America discovered when he took his oath of office last week.

Aberdeen was the place to be the previous weekend for the Dons' pulsating win over Celtic, so they can be forgiven for failing to live up to that in this featherweight display.

The pre-match anticipation of a defining double over the Old Firm may have gone unfulfilled, but there were nonetheless plenty of positives to take from Walter Smith's fifth straight unsuccessful attempt to stuff a Pittodrie win into the pocket of his new Rangers cardigan.

Not that this was much of a victory charge from the visitors. Smith has obviously been missing the opportunity to utilise his European tactics. Though his negative 4-5-1 approach is precisely why Rangers won't win the league – Celtic, at least, try to beat teams, and would not let an opportunity to top the table pass so meekly by – it is a compliment to the Dons that Smith dug it out for the occasion.

Kenny Miller was left so isolated that he forgot what the ball looked like, mistaking it for Jamie Langfield's head. Jimmy Calderwood has often had cause to call his stopper a ba' heid, but there the similarity ends. As Bertrand Bossu emerged from the bench, the Red Army had that same uneasy feeling they once experienced when Brian Irvine pulled on Theo Snelders's jersey in the same fixture.

But Bossu, like Irvine, preserved the stalemate and, with it, the confidence quietly building in the Dons ranks.

Aberdeen did not hit the heights but still managed to take a point. When they return to recent form, the Reds’ roll will be hard to stop. But here their passing was painful to watch.

Chris Crighton is the editor of Dons fanzine the Red Final