Captain Marvel

AT Carrington on Friday, Sir Alex Ferguson was asked about the imminent invasion of the masses from the north, about the blue-clad army heading out of his homeland to occupy his adopted city.

"They're bringing 100,000," said Ferguson. "That's the biggest crowd they've brought down here since Bonnie Prince Charlie."

In among the cavalcade will be a vehicle packed with Barry Ferguson's ever-widening circle of family and friends. Big 'uns and little 'uns; mothers and fathers, nieces and nephews and cousins and second cousins.

A busload. All eating up road to support their man, all waiting on delivery of match tickets he has little hope of providing them with. He sat down on Thursday and let out a little sigh when the subject of cup final briefs was mentioned. "I've not got enough for them," he said. "And I've not told half of them yet."

This is the game before the game and it is hard-fought. The pursuit of tickets is becoming a fearsome battle. "I can take my kids, I can take (brother] Derek's boys down, my uncles, my cousins and hopefully I'll get them to the game. I've only got half of them to the game the now. Aye, it's a problem. It's impossible. I cannae get tickets. That's the way it is. The club has been allocated a certain amount and I can't do anything about it."

These are heady days for the Rangers captain. The best he's known. The best he's ever likely to know.

"I don't know how I'll feel come Wednesday night but I'm excited already," he says. "I've never been in this situation before, so it's something I'm looking forward to, looking forward to sampling the atmosphere. We're going down on the Monday and the nerves will start then. It's been a good season so far and it could become a great season. Getting to a European final is not something I thought I'd achieve but we've done it. We've done it the hard way at times but we deserve to get there."

The potential for history dawned on Ferguson after the Werder Bremen game. At that point he got to thinking that something unusual was happening, sparked by some remarkable things. "See after the Bremen game, I thought this could be our season. I know we got a bit of a doing. I've never been under that kind of pressure in a game before. It's one of the biggest doings I've ever had but we held out and that's the way you have to do it at times.

"Allan McGregor's save (in the 84th minute from Boubacar Sanogo that stopped the tie going into extra time] is the obvious one. It was an unbelievable save, I don't even know how he done it. I think that got us through, that save. The Bremen game, that was the one. I've never seen the stats. I don't know how many attempts they had on goal – and I don't want to know – but it was probably then when you start to believe, start to think our luck is in here."

A shot at the quad? Where has this little miracle come from, he's asked. What's it down to?

"I've played in loads of good teams but spirit-wise and for a will to win this side is the best I've been involved in. Why? The manager. Simple. Simple as that. Look where we were 18 months ago and look where we are now.

"How would I sum him up? Ehm..." Ferguson catches sight of his manager coming in the door. "Here he is now," he says. The captain waits until Smith is close enough to hear and then gives his answer. "He's the best ever!" he trumpets, as Smith disappears through a door. "I need to try and get another contract out of him," he smiles.

Ferguson was joking around but his point was a deadly serious one. Smith rescued him from God knows what. "At one stage I thought that was it for me, didn't I? He came in and saved me from having to leave again."

If Smith saved Ferguson then you could argue that Ferguson has done more than his share to save Smith. When the manager returned to business in charge of Scotland, Ferguson was a pivotal figure in his success, a man whose steely performances helped bring the victories that re-established Smith as a coach of substance and an attractive proposition to Sir David Murray. In their time together at Ibrox they have worked hand in glove. After hearing the player eulogise the captain on Thursday we heard the reverse on Friday.

"If there was a problem between Barry and Paul Le Guen then that problem was finished when I took over," said Smith. "I can't comment on what happened before because I don't know and I didn't go out of my way to find out.

"As a captain he shows an example. This season has been as hard as any. He'll be nearly 70 games now (not quite; he played his 60th of the season yesterday]. For the boys who play at the back that's still an achievement to have that number of matches. Allan McGregor, Carlos Cuellar, Davie Weir, Sasa Papac are all up there on a fair number of games. For a midfielder to play that number matches in a season, especially in a new team, where we don't have a great level of economy in our play, when there are not many stages in games when we can take it easy, it's outstanding. We need everybody at the highest level in terms of energy. For him, it's been hardest."

Before this UEFA Cup run gathered a head of steam there was a feeling that not everyone at Rangers was all that enthusiastic about the competition, fearing that heavy involvement would diminish their ability to fight off Celtic domestically. Ferguson never bought that argument. "No, I still wanted it. People say we weren't bothered about getting through but that was a load of nonsense. Every competition you enter as a football player you have to go in with the intent of trying to win it. We were desperate to get through. I know there's loads of games and people are talking about tiredness but that doesn't come into play. You rest up well enough and look after yourself. There's no problems."

No problems? Well, there's the issue with his troublesome ankle and this bone-on-bone complication that needs the kind of rest he can't afford to give it. Four to six weeks off, the specialist said. "I don't even think about it," says Ferguson. "It's all big games we're going into so it doesn't bother me. At the end of the season I can rest. Go away and forget about things. Chill out. I probably wouldn't be playing (if the games weren't so important]. I'd probably have rested but I'm not going to miss out on a great chance. You go and see the specialist and ask him is there going to be damage later on in my career and his answer was no and that's good enough for me."

Given a choice what would it be; SPL title or UEFA Cup? "Winning the league," he says, without pausing. "I've said that from day one. At the start of the season you set out your targets and that's what you want to win. The bread and butter is the league."

He stops for a second, smiles, and says: "I wouldn't knock back the UEFA Cup, though." He has much work to do in the coming days. Much analysis of Zenit and much thinking about the best way to overcome them. And, critically, from somewhere, he needs to find some tickets. That might prove the hardest part of what could be a historic week.

We might just catch Zenit napping after 10-day lay-off, claims Weir

Davie weir came up with a new twist to the fixture furore the other day. Instead of gurning about the supposed injustices perpetrated against his club the centre-half had something to say about the way Zenit St Petersburg are preparing for the UEFA Cup final. Maybe it's wishful thinking but he's not all that convinced that such a long period of inactivity before such a seismic game is the way to go.

Russian football, as we know, is on hold in honour of Zenit, their games postponed to give Dick Advocaat's men the best chance of succeeding in Manchester. They had a warm-up match last night in Holland but it was hardly intense, hardly the kind of battle that Rangers have been engaged in three times in the last eight days.

"There's a big argument for the case that Zenit might have too much time," said Weir. "Having 10 days to build up for one game is massive. Time can drag and you can end up playing the game before you are actually there. It's a valid point and hopefully it will work in our favour. In the past Scotland had a game cancelled before we played Italy and we (Rangers) had a game cancelled before playing Lyon. It didn't work in our favour. Hopefully that will be the case on Wednesday."

In the Rangers dressing room there is no head as old or as wise as Weir's, no man who has been at the coalface as long as he has. It's not just his age – 38 years and one day exactly – that commands the respect of all around him but also his everlasting qualities at the sharp end of his profession. This is his 16th season in senior football and yesterday's match against Dundee United marked his 60th game of this frenetic campaign.

Weir, as you might expect, is unapologetic about the manner in which Rangers have progressed to the final. Most of those people who criticise the tactics don't understand what they're on about, he says. The blind ignorance is something that annoys him. It takes a lot to get a placid soul like Weir angry but the jibes about boring football do it more often than not.

"People are living in a fantasy world if they think Rangers can go out, attack and play three up front and be successful in Europe. That's just not going to happen. As a manager you look at your team and play to your strengths. You play whatever way you think will get you to the next round. You don't play to please the opposing manager or their fans. That's not the name of the game.

"What annoys me is people criticising you for being good defensively. If a team can't score a goal against you then they don't deserve to win the game. We've taken a lot of criticism for that but in my opinion it's misjudged and comes from people who maybe don't appreciate football as well as they should. Maybe that's a bit harsh, I don't know."

There is an exception and his name is Lionel Messi. "I can understand him to a certain degree as he's one of the best players in the world and he was shackled and that didn't suit him. I've got sympathy for a player saying that because he wants to play beautiful passes, beat six players and score goals. But when it's coming from other sources it's a bit harder.

"I'm a defender so I'm biased but there's a skill in defending. It's an important part of the game. The Italians have done it for years, as have some of the greatest teams in the world. Defending is an art."

For Weir this has been one hell of a journey, not just through Europe but into the kind of world he never inhabited before. The intensity of Ibrox is something he is revelling in, the claustrophobia only making him better and better. Some people embrace it, he says, and others don't. It's not for everybody, this constant need for victory. But it's definitely for him. Having soldiered at Goodison Park for so long with rarely having anything to play for at this stage of the season bar the odd relegation fight, the quest for trophies has made a young man out of him.

"When you play for this club that's part of the fabric. As soon as you win a game you can enjoy it for half an hour then you have to focus on the next one because you have to win that one too. That's what you want. I've been in teams before where you are five games from the end of the season and there's nothing to play for. We can use every cliche in the book about there being only cup finals left and every game being a must-win. It's never been truer.

"Everton's a big club with a great tradition. But the demands at Rangers are bigger. I love Everton but there's no getting away from the fact that the demands are bigger here. I don't think that's appreciated down south. They're probably not interested, to be honest with you. I'm sure it's the same at Manchester United and Chelsea – they'll have the same pressure. At Everton David Moyes wanted to create that atmosphere and he drove it to be like that. That's not something that can happen overnight. At Rangers it's been like that for decades."

Not since Scotland played Brazil in the 1998 World Cup has Weir known a demand for tickets to rival the rush that is currently unfolding around the ears of the hard-pressed players. The hunt for briefs is a daily obsession and it is something he is slightly concerned about. "It's important that you get all that stuff out of the way and prepare properly for the game rather than worrying about it. That's something we have to get in order."

What also needs urgent attention is his own record at the City of Manchester Stadium. He lost three out of four there as an Everton man. But, then, everything has changed in his career since then, changed utterly.

Route to the final

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

SECOND QUALIFYING ROUND
FK Zeta (H) 2-0 (A) 1-0 (agg) 3-0
Goals at Ibrox from David Weir and Nacho Novo won it for Rangers, despite Alan Hutton being sent off. Walter Smith's side finished the job away from home when DaMarcus Beasley netted the only goal.

THIRD QUALIFYING ROUND
Red Star Belgrade (H) 1-0 (A) 0-0 (agg) 1-0 With a place in the group stages at stake, substitute Novo fired home the only goal of the tie in the last minute of the first leg in Glasgow, and then Rangers' defence held out in Serbia a fortnight later.

GROUP E
Stuttgart (H) 2-1
Stuttgart went in front through Mario Gomez, but Rangers were inspired by full-back Hutton as they fought back. The Scotland defender set up Charlie Adam for a fine equaliser, and the defender won the penalty which Jean-Claude Darcheville netted for the winner.

Lyon (A) 3-0
Startling result for both sides as goals from summer signings Lee McCulloch, Daniel Cousin and Beasley stunned the French champions.

Barcelona (H) 0-0
Rangers were accused of playing "anti-football" by Barcelona star Lionel Messi after an attritional battle with the Spanish giants.

Barcelona (A) 0-2
Rangers were well beaten at the Nou Camp, with Thierry Henry and Messi scoring. The scoreline barely reflected Barcelona's dominance.

Stuttgart (A) 2-3
Ciprian Marica's late winner for Stuttgart secured the Germans' first win in the competition. Adam and Barry Ferguson had earlier scored for Rangers.

Lyon (H) 0-3
Needing just a draw, the home side were thumped by Lyon who exacted revenge.

UEFA CUP

LAST 32
Panathinaikos (H) 0-0 (A) 1-1 (agg) 1-1 February 21: Panathinaikos 1 Rangers 1 Panathinaikos defended stubbornly at Ibrox and a brilliant early strike from defender Ioannis Goumas gave the Greeks the lead in Athens. But Novo came up with another priceless European goal, and Rangers edged through thanks to their away goal.

LAST 16
Werder Bremen (H) 2-0 (A) 0-1 (agg) 2-1
Goals from Daniel Cousin and Steven Davis gave Rangers a lead to take to Germany, after Bremen goalkeeper Tim Wiese made two costly errors. The Bundesliga side dominated the second leg but only had a goal from Diego to show for their efforts as Allan McGregor defied them.

QUARTER-FINAL
Sporting Lisbon (H) 0-0 (A) 2-0 (agg) 2-0 Rangers looked in real danger after a scoreless first leg, but they defied expectations again by winning in style in Portugal. Darcheville shot them ahead on the hour mark in Lisbon, before Steven Whittaker's late solo strike sealed victory.

SEMI-FINAL
Fiorentina (H) 0-0 (A) 0-0 (agg) 0-0
Rangers win 4-2 on penalties.
Rangers defended almost all the way through the entire 120 minutes of the second leg in Florence, before coming from behind to win the penalty shoot-out, with Novo converting the decisive spot-kick.