Week 23: The Dark Prince

"It is better to be feared than loved," said Barry Ferguson Niccolo Machiavelli, although even that chronicler of 15th century Florentine intrigue would have been appalled at the carnage that was Rangers' 1-0 win over Motherwell at Fir Park. Graham Speirs in The Herald thought it was "an explosive and eventful match could have gone either way", while The Independent's Nick Harris reckoned Rangers "snatched an undeserved win in a helter-skelter game of controversy, punch-ups and red cards". Stuart Darroch in The Times labelled the 90 minutes "an old fashioned Scottish stramash", where "21 players proceeded to push, pull and lash out at each other in what resembled a end-of-night pub fight". The Sun's Iain King, who no doubt will enage in the ancient Hindu practice of Sati and throw himself on Barry's funeral pyre, reckoned it was "an afternoon of ill-tempered drama" where Rangers manager Paul Le Guen "stood accused of ripping the heart out of Rangers", for his decision to drop poor, little, I would eat my own foot for the badge, Barry Ferguson. However, The Scotsman's Glenn Gibbons decided that "if there had been excitement, it had been of the intriguing, rather than the thrilling, variety." Machiavelli would have appreciated that at least.

Elsewhere, there was a glimmer of interest for the hacks at Easter Road where the Scotsman's Stuart Bathgate watched "by no means the most uneventful of goalless draws" as Aberdeen and Hibernian shared the points. Bathgate thought Hibs "made enough chances to win the game several times over"; a view shared by The Herald's James Porteus who could not beleive the how the home side had "failed to beat a flu and injury-hit Aberdeen side despite dominating completely".

Sadly, the other matches aroused little interest from the wordfumblers. Celtic continued their war against competition in the SPL by beating Kilmarnock 2-0 at Celtic Park, in what was clearly a low-key affair, as was Hearts' 1-0 away win over a Dunfermline side who continue to languish in the dark corners of the league, and now racked up seven-and-a-half hours of SPL football without a goal. Thankfully there was no such scarcity at Tannadice where Falkirk feasted on the previously on-form Dundee United in a 5-1 win, while Inverness CT outmuscled St. Mirren in a 2-1 victory.