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Richard Gough deep in denial

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Richard Gough has denied that his infamous goal celebration in November 1997 was premature for 10-in-a-row.

A few months earlier the defender captained the club to a ninth successive title success before surprisingly quitting Ibrox to wind down his career with Kansas City Wiz.

Lorenzo Amoruso, Sergio Porrini, Jonas Thern, Marco Negri, Rino Gattuso, Tony Vidmar and Staale Stensas were brought in to deliver a tenth title with Walter Smith already able to call on Ally McCoist, Stuart McCall, Gordon Durie, Andy Goram, Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup.

From the Family Fun Day where a full house watched Rangers A v Rangers B there was only one thing in the mind of the Ibrox fans as they counted down to 10-in-a-row.

After a slow start to the season an SOS was sent to Gough to restore calm as the gloating towards another title success resumed.

The first Glasgow derby of the season was delayed until November with the build up to the match dominated by the return of Gough to ensure that 10-in-a-row was delivered to Walter Smith’s side that had been booted out of Europe by IFK Gothenburg and Strasbourg before the end of September.

Speaking to the Daily Record the Ibrox legend claimed:

I was away for about three months and came back to help out in the year we were going for 10 In A Row. In my third game back, we played Celtic and I scored.

I’ve since read that wee Jackie McNamara – and I am delighted he is on the mend after his health scare – said that my celebration that day fired up his team because they thought that by raising both hands into the air and pumping them up and down I was supposed to be saying, ‘that’s the 10’.

It wasn’t. That’s never been my style and I was certainly taking nothing for granted as early as October or November.

What happened was this. I’d been playing in Kansas City and when their American Football team, the Kansas City Chiefs got a touchdown, their players lifted both arms in the air as if they were raising the roof.

I didn’t think I’d score but before the game I said to Gazza, Negri and Laudrup, ‘if you score, give it the raising the roof celebration that I used to see in Kansas’. It was never about 10 In A Row.

I could have baited Celtic a lot of other times in my career and I didn’t do it, so there’s no way I was going to do it with so much on the line that season.

After the match Gough made no effort to explain his contrived ‘raising the roof’ celebration.

The Swedish born defender left Ibrox again at the end of that season, captaining his side to defeat in the final of the Scottish Cup at Celtic Park.

Unusually despite the return of Smith as manager a decade later Gough has never been offered any sort of coaching role at Ibrox.

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