Kaunas, Rangers & The BBC – How Bad?

I know that many people around the country are probably having a good laugh about the outcome of tonight’s Kaunas V Rangers match in the Champions League qualifiers, but seriously, I’m struggling to remember the last time I tuned into a more depressing half hour of football – and this is coming from a Hearts fan who went to quite a few games last season!

It’s difficult to tell whether it was one single thing or a combination of many that made what I saw of the match such non-compulsive viewing. Certainly, the standard of football on display was absolutely appalling – an embarrassment to the name of the Champions League if we’re honest, but was it any worse than the utterly lacklustre commentary of the BBC’s Paul Mitchell and Pat Nevin? You have to admit, it’s a very tough call!

Why oh why do the BBC continue to employ Mitchell as their number one commentator? Are they seriously suggesting that they don’t have anyone else who could do a better job? I honestly cannot think of a more boring, monotone-sounding voice than this guy’s, and when you put a man who sounds like Pat Nevin does next to him it doesn’t really improve matters either – they just send you to sleep…and that’s before the football’s even started.

Not that there was much in the way of football on display in Kaunas tonight, where two dreadfully poor sides did their best to outdo Mitchell and Nevin in the boredom stakes. I suppose one good thing about Kaunas winning is that instead of loaning all their dross over to Hearts in time for the new season starting, they may want to hold onto them for the remainder of their European campaign, giving new Hearts manager Csaba Laszlo the chance to model his side properly. We can but hope, because even though they were better than Rangers tonight, Hearts’ feeder team were still poor – there was no-one in that side that you’d be desperate to see in a maroon jersey any time soon.

As for Rangers, well, their performance was utterly predictable, if not the result they achieved (you always expect them to win for some reason, even when they’re this bad!). This team played to what strengths they had last season, but maybe they used up all of their luck in that one year. They’ve signed no-one in the summer who looks likely to improve their starting XI, and if more teams in the SPL actually start to realise how bad they are (unlike last season when they all continued to suffer from stage-fright against them), then there’s no reason why they can’t make it a real battle for Rangers to finish in the top three this year. That is a big ‘if’ though.

So, not the most inspiring half hour of football I’ve ever seen in my life, but I suppose you can’t have everything. I mean, it’s not every day that a Hearts Reserve side knock Glasgow Rangers out of Europe courtesy of a late goal scored by one of their worst players in recent seasons is it? Chins up!