Advocaat rewarded for show of faith

The little English striker, Rod Wallace, scored his second hat trick in five games against Motherwell at the weekend and found himself being praised for his contribution to Rangers' season so far.

The former Leeds United player, signed by the Ibrox club in a Bosman situation 18 months ago, has found himself the target of criticism from the support for the number of good scoring opportunities he has missed this season. Always, however, he has remained in coach Dick Advocaat's line-up, almost always the first choice among the strikers as several scramble around for a starting position.

Advocaat knows his value to the team and when you see his tally for the season - he has now scored 17 goals in 32 appearances - you can see why Advocaat has stood by him, even in the spells where he was not scoring as frequently as he is doing now.

This latest hat trick - all headers, incidentally - means he has scored 10 of his goals since the winter break just as Rangers look for that kind of finishing power on the run-in towards the league and Scottish Cup double they want to win so much.

In their last Premier League game before this meeting with Motherwell, Rangers had played good football, created many chances, and taken none of them against St Johnstone as they faltered to give Celtic an opening which the Parkhead men could not take.

This time, Rangers did not play so well but finished more clinic-ally and pushed themselves back into a 12-point lead with only 11 games remaining to be played.

That may account for the often lackadaisical approach that the Rangers players dropped into during this 90 minutes which, even though it produced eight goals, did not set anyone's blood tingling.

Except, that is, for Wallace, who admitted after his hat trick: ''I only hope that I am now repaying the manager for sticking by me and having faith in me earlier in the season. The title isn't over, and we know that, but we are going along nicely.''

Not that you would necessarily have believed that if listening to Advocaat a little earlier, when he was insisting that despite the six goals he had seen his players strike past former Ibrox icon Andy Goram in the Motherwell goal, there was still improvement required.

Snapped the demanding Dutchman: ''Football-wise, we can show more quality. We can play better than we did today. The goals were good, there were some beauties among them, and the result was excellent. But there are still some things we can do better.''

Defensively, he was unhappy at the way Rangers were caught out by Motherwell's two goals, firstly from Benito Kemble - whose strike gave Motherwell a short-lived lead - and then Lee McCulloch. There was another occasion when McCulloch had the ball in the net with a near carbon-copy of his goal, but offside was given against the Fir Park front-man.

Advocaat did explain the lapses away by pointing out: ''We had almost a new defence out today and even then we had to play Craig Moore out of position at right back, even though he had the flu. We had to do it, but Craig could not jump for the ball and so we were weakened in the air at the back. We had some other players with flu symptoms, including Andrei Kanchelskis.''

Illness was not the reason for his withdrawal from the proceedings midway through the first half. Nor was that the reason for Seb Rozental's substitution at half-time. Explained Advocaat: ''The first half change when we replaced Kanchelskis with Neil McCann was for tactical reasons. I wanted to play another attacker and Andrei is more of a midfield player. I think that worked for us. As for Rozental, we needed a little more fight and so we put on Billy Dodds. Seb is still not l00 per cent fit for the Scottish style of game and he knows that himself. But he will soon be completely ready.''

The Rangers captain, Lorenzo Amoruso, accepted that Advocaat was not totally happy with the performance, saying: ''The mana-ger has to say these things at times because he has to keep us playing at our best when we still have to win the league and the Scottish Cup. He must always look for the maximum from the players and we realise that. But the most important thing was to win the game and to give ourselves the lead of 12 points with only 11 games left to play. It is important to keep ourselves clear of Celtic and we were able to do that.

''I think that Rod showed today how important he is for the team. It was his goal - the first one - because he was there to finish off my header. Then he scored two more and it shows he is always there looking for goals and you need to have someone such as that in the team. He was injured against Parma, remember, and it took him a little time to get over that, but here he is, scoring goals when we need them.

''He is the best scorer at this club and we have needed him since the injury to Michael Mols and he has been there for the team. There has been a weight on his shoulders, but he has carried that and delivered the goals.''

On Saturday, the first came from an Amoruso assist while the two others came from crosses whipped across goal by McCann. The others were shared between Jorg Albertz with a stunning drive - right-footed - from the edge of the penalty box and then penalties from Rozental and the Turkish midfielder Tugay as the game crept into injury time. Both awards came when blatant hand ball offences by Ged Brannan and Jamie McGowan were seen by referee John Rowbotham.

Next league games: Rangers - Celtic (h); Motherwell - Hearts (a).

Talking Point

Motherwell manager Billy Davies' failure to attend the press room after the game initially smacked of sour grapes, but it turned out that he had to rush away to be by the side of a sick relative.