Age before beauty at Ibrox

MORE AND more the view hardens; if Rangers didn't already exist you just couldn't make them up. This is a team that defies the natural conventions of football, that makes a mockery of the accepted order of things. Here is one example. His name is Davie Weir. He will soon be 38 years old and today's Old Firm meeting will be his 57th game of the season.

Walter Smith signed him in January of 2007 thinking he was good for six months and no more yet Weir is defying everybody. As his younger team-mate teammates fall through injury, he ploughs on from one seismic game to the next. At his age, it shouldn't be happening, but it is.

Rangers are different. And here is another example. In the Champions League qualifiers, Champions League proper and the UEFA Cup this season, Rangers have scored more goals away from home than they have at home, winning just one more game in their fortress in Glasgow than they have in the alien grounds of Europe. Home teams in these competitions should have an adventurous bent; they don't. The opposite, in fact. On Thursday night, Fiorentina had three times as many shots on target and almost 40% more possession. In the Ibrox quarter-final against Sporting Lisbon, the visitors had four attempts on target to Rangers one and 25% more possession.

They have been called anti-football by Lionel Messi. Adrian Mutu came close to calling them ugly the other night. On Friday, Steven Whittaker succinctly captured the modus operandi of his team. "We saw signs of Fiorentina's frustration at times," he said of Thursday night's stalemate. "They were passing it along their midfield, probably seeing a sea of blue players in front of them. They couldn't get through us. We made it awkward for them and we worked tremendously hard to make it like that. I know it's not very pleasing on the eye but that's the way we've been playing in Europe and it's worked for us so far."

Even their own fans, at times, have been unhappy at the lack of adventure although they're fairly silent on that front now. As Rangers continue to drive on in their rope-a-dope fashion, all that's missing from the old masterplan invented by Muhammad Ali in the jungle of Zaire is a proclamation of greatness and a snide look over the shoulder at a fallen opponent. "You're out, sucker," Ali said to George Foreman in 1974. Somehow, we can't see Walter Smith goading people like the great man – mind you, he did have a mighty pop at Peter Lawwell when basically branding him a bullshitter on the subject of the fixture logjam – but he has a knack of luring rivals into his trap all the same. He's done it to Panathinaikos, Werder Bremen and Sporting Lisbon in Europe and if he does it again today at Celtic then the league championship will assuredly be won.

Smith's team inspire awe rather than admiration. If they go on to win two, three or all four trophies that will probably still be the overriding emotion. Their brand of football is not easy to enjoy but you have to respect it, respect the cunning tactics and the mental strength of the team who have executed the game-plan in the most clinical style.

They have done so against a back-drop of injuries and suspensions and with an overload of fixtures that would fry the brain of weaker men.

Going to Celtic today they are without eight players, four of whom would have started the game. Fresh in their minds will be the last minute of the last time they played at Parkhead. Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and all that. "It was a sore one," said Smith of that defeat, "in the sense that when you lose a goal as late as that, regardless of how the game has gone, you feel a little bit aggrieved. There was a disappointment there but in subsequent games it hasn't looked like it's affected us. We hadn't lost a league game in nearly six months so when you do lose one after going through a spell like that you concern yourself from a management point of view – you get worried there might be a knock-on, that the bubble could burst. But the boys seem to have handled it very well."

The Old Firm game marks Rangers' 59th match of the season in all competitions. They have played 17 in Europe alone. "It's nearly half a league season again," says Smith. "I don't think we could ever have imagined we'd have that number of games. It's difficult to wade your way through them all but we've managed to do it."

They'll have to do it without the suspended Carlos Cuellar this afternoon, which is a worry given his commanding presence in the heart of the defence all year. The upside is that Weir is there. Isn't he always?

"Davie brings a kind of stability to any defence, not just helping Carlos but Sasa Papac and others. We've had huge benefits from that. You have to say that Carlos coming from one style of football to another has settled really quickly and that's to his credit. But he enjoys playing beside Davie. Most players do because he has this calmness about him that goes through the rest of your defence. He's been fantastic. He's outperformed anything I thought he'd be capable of. His consistency over the last 13 months has been nothing short of fantastic for a player of his age."

Smith is now at the beginning of the biggest week of his managerial life, an Old Firm game that could, if all goes well, all but secure a championship, followed by a trip to Italy for a place in a European final. Two away games in two hugely hostile environments. Celtic he knows about. Fiorentina, well, he's ready for that, too. "It's a good atmosphere at Celtic Park. It's an atmosphere you relish. I'm not talking about the surrounding aspects of it but the atmosphere created there is great. In all these places – Florence, Celtic Park, Ibrox, the Bernabeu, I don't ever find them intimidating. They're what I'm involved in football for.

"UEFA have made sure everyone has cut out the tricks that teams used to try in Europe. You don't get that now and players are more used to travelling abroad and playing. Yes, there's intimidating atmospheres like in Belgrade when we were there but players handle that situation now. If it's a hostile one and you're decent enough in how you handle it, it can be something that can inspire you."

What price the sucker-punch in Florence, the rope-a-dope working yet again? "I hope we can get to a situation where a certain amount of frustration does creep into their team but they have experienced enough players. But I think an away goal can bring a bit of nervousness. The loss of a goal is a big, big thing now."

Rangers have already run a marathon this season. Now they have to sprint. They'll try to weather the storm at Parkhead and get a point. Better still, soak up the pressure and strike out for the win.

Whatever you say about them, whatever criticism that's been levelled in their direction, nobody can doubt their ability to do just that. The rope-a-dope was first seen when Weir was a young boy but it's been given a new twist this season. "I'm ready to rumble," said Ali. The same can be said of Smith and his team this afternoon.