Fleck adds touch of gloss for Rangers

Rangers 2 Dundee United

John Fleck earned and converted the penalty that broke the deadlock here yesterday, might have scored twice from open play as well and comfortably did enough to earn the man-of-the-match award. It was his second such accolade from the three SPL starts that the 17-year-old forward has made in his fledgling career, all of them this year.

Kyle Lafferty's goal on the rebound in injury time put the icing on the cake, but Fleck had already infused the brandy. There are barely any reasons for supporters at Ibrox to feel heady these days but Fleck provides one of them, and as long as Rangers can keep him he should ease the pain of the price of a ticket during the recession.

"You have a responsibility for young players as a manager," said the Rangers manager, Walter Smith. "But if he's keen to continue [playing first-team football] and it doesn't look as if it's affecting him, that's a good thing. He's shown enough quality in these few games to show that he is going to be a good player."

The opening goal, in the 77th minute, came from the spot after the referee, Iain Brines, adjudged that the visitors' Mihael Kovacevic had nudged Fleck in the back.

With Rangers' first-choice penalty-taker, Kris Boyd, having been substituted, Fleck grabbed the ball and confidently stroked it home with his left foot.

The teenager had come close to scoring in the first half, when he blasted a snapshot from the left, targeted dead centre from 25 yards, and saw it dipping under the bar before Lukasz Zaluska got a palm to it.

And Fleck curled another left-footer wide in the 66th minute of a match in which his attacking runs in dangerous areas went well beyond his notional left-winger role.

United's manager, Craig Levein, said he thought the penalty decision was "soft", but he accepted that perhaps tiredness had played a part in his side's defeat.

They had lost 11-10 on penalties after extra time against Celtic in their League Cup semi-final on Wednesday night. "It's not easy to play the best two teams in the country in the space of a few days," Levein said.