AN ABERDEEN team who were once the scourge of the Old Firm are currently no more of an inconvenience than a mild itch. Yesterday Rangers got rid of them - 4-0 - as perfunctorily as scratching their arm. It was not so much Aberdeen's poor play as their utter lack of conviction and character which must have alarmed their watching fans.

The goals which the home side scored on either side of the interval - an Erik Bo Andersen double before, one each from Jorge Albertz and Brian Laudrup after - were far from flattering.

Andersen's first goal was a superlative example of the awareness and touch of Laudrup. The free ranging forward gathered the ball midway inside his own half and could only have heard, rather than seen, Andersen, 50 yards upfield and scuttling quick as a hare into the inside right channel. The pass was perfection, allowing Andersen to drive the ball with his left foot low to the left and over the line off the post.

There was a little good fortune about the Dane's second, but that merely compensated for the bad luck he had earlier, when he might have scored twice.

Curiously, the third was scored during Aberdeen's most encouraging spell. Their rhythm was destroyed when Brian Irvine, rather foolishly, tripped Craig McInnes as the latter received Laudrup's pass. Albertz rolled the penalty kick to the right of Stillie. Laudrup added the fourth.

Andersen's current hot streak makes him a rival to Celtic's Jorge Cadete, whose double against Hearts at Tynecastle on Saturday not only brought a vital 2-1 victory but took his recent total to 10 from six matches. Cadete was a glowing exception to the generally murky play on a bleak day. A soup like pitch led to an abandonment of the studied, passing game of both sides. But the Portuguese striker retained his intelligent, wriggling quickness to give Celtic the lead and restore it after Hamilton had equalised for Hearts.