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After an inconsistent start that has included some historic losses, Rangers’ League Cup quarter-final against Partick could ease pressure on the manager
Rangers are more worried about losing their previous titles than winning this season’s SPL, writes Alex Anderson
First Minister Alex Salmond spoke to Sir David Frost on Al Jazeera on the need to keep Rangers going. While visiting Scotland, prime minister David Cameron made a painfully opportunistic plea that the club should not disappear. By the time Sir Alex of Govan demanded the club be saved, the sponsors pledged their continued support and the next fixture became a 50,000 Ibrox sell-out, it was difficult to imagine why Rangers had lurched into administration at all.
League meetings between the two Hampshire clubs have been relatively rare but their derby matches are as keenly contested as any local rivalry in English football. James de Mellow reports
On April 29, 1939, as Portsmouth pulled off a surprise 4-1 FA Cup final win over Wolves at Wembley, only 4,000 Southampton fans showed up for a home league game on the same day, preferring to cheer on their neighbours while listening to the radio. When the trophy was brought back to the south coast, it was displayed for a short time at Southampton Guildhall and even paraded around The Dell for Saints fans to salute Pompey’s achievements. One wonders, then, what Hampshire’s pre-war football supporters would make of Operation Delphin, which the police deemed necessary to prevent trouble before and after the south-coast derby on December 18. As a condition of purchasing a ticket, all travelling Saints fans agreed to be bussed in a “bubble” under police escort between the two cities, while eight-foot-high barriers were erected north-east of Fratton Park in order to keep a minority of idiots from both sides coming into contact with each other.