Gers won’t look for excuses during busy schedule: Gerrard
RANGERS manager Steven Gerrard has promised no excuses after his men made their domestic business even tougher by securing progress in Europe.
Gerrard stretched the unbeaten start to his managerial career to eight games after a goalless draw against Maribor set up a Europa League play-off against Russian side Ufa.
Rangers players were given yesterday off following their return from Slovenia and now face a difficult League Cup encounter tomorrow against former Liverpool coach Steve Clarke’s Kilmarnock side, who beat the Light Blues twice last season.
Results on Thursday also ensured Rangers will be 800 miles east of Moscow for the play-off second leg on August 30, two and a half days before they face Celtic in a lunchtime kick-off at Parkhead.
Gerrard said: “Confidence is growing and it’s just important we keep the momentum going. The schedule is tough but we knew that — the reward for doing well is more matches.
“The good thing is we can share the load, we have a decent-sized squad and the majority are healthy. We could do with a couple more bodies getting back from injury and if we could add to that before the window shuts it would be very helpful.
“It is what it is. You won’t hear any excuses. We realise it’s tough and will be a challenge but we just focus on the next game, against Kilmarnock in the Cup against Steve Clarke.
“He’s a very good manager who has his teams very organised and we know it’s a different surface. So we are faced straight away with another difficult challenge. For me it’s important I just keep the players focused on the next challenge and not get too far ahead of ourselves.”
Celtic also face a run of Thursday-Sunday matches after bowing out of the Champions League, although they are at home against Suduva immediately before the derby.
Defeat by AEK Athens also saw the Scottish champions miss out on a £30m-plus stream of income but Gerrard did not concern himself with their fortunes.
“The situation is to worry about us,” he said. “Our focus can’t be looking over the garden fence. We have to make sure we are moving forward. We are trying to build something that can compete domestically and do ourselves justice in Europe. Whatever happens at other clubs is their business.”
Gerrard offered no update on his pursuit of Kyle Lafferty following Hearts manager Craig Levein’s assertion that transfer talks were ongoing, while he reiterated his desire to see Alfredo Morelos offered an improved contract after Bordeaux failed with a £3.75m offer.
LEE Doherty is sitting in Heathrow Airport. The Irish League legend and former Northern Ireland international laughs when explaining how much he and his wife Sharon love their holidays.
The latest is a special trip. Destination Bali for a family reunion.
Along with youngest daughter Jenna and her boyfriend, Lee and Sharon are jetting off to the beautiful Indonesian island to meet up with their eldest girl Jodi and her partner who are currently enjoying a year in Australia.
Doherty is quite emotional thinking about his family being together again. It’s what matters to him most, though the 55-yearold ex-Linfield and Glenavon captain admits football was once top of his priority list.
“Years ago football for me was the be-all and end-all. Before we had kids, when I would come home from a defeat I wouldn’t want to talk to anybody and needed to get another training session in before I would get it out of my system,” says Doherty with an honesty that is one of the hallmarks of his personality.
“When you have kids and other responsibilities they should take priority. I probably didn’t learn that until I was 30 when I joined Glenavon from Linfield. Glenavon taught me that family was okay.
“People at the club bought my children Christmas presents and things like that. That would never have happened at Linfield. My family were very much embraced at Glenavon whereas before it was, ‘You are Lee Doherty and you stand alone and your family isn’t involved’. That’s why Glenavon means so much to me. Now I know family is everything and we love spending time together.”
As a promising teenager, Belfast boy Doherty was due to go on trial with Everton only for manager Howard Kendall to get the sack, putting the trip off. Legendary Everton and Linfield scout Jim Emery suggested Windsor Park rather than Goodison Park may be a better option.
Doherty recalls: “I wasn’t that interested in Linfield because Manchester United were my team and at that stage I wanted to get to England so I could play for them one day but I went to watch the Blues train and couldn’t believe how good players like Peter Dornan, Billy Murray and Stephen McKee were and I signed that night.”
That decision would lead to spectacular success under managerial great Roy Coyle as Doherty won 20 trophies, including EIGHT league titles, in 14 years at the club, becoming one of the most respected captains in Linfield’s
❝ My family were embraced at Glenavon. That’s why the club means so much to me’
history in the process. All this after a debut as a 17-year-old when he played on for 10 minutes after breaking his ankle!
On his time at Linfield, Doherty says: “You just expected to win. Roy Coyle would never have been a motivator of men but he knew and trusted his players.
“I remember speaking to him when I went to manage Bangor after my playing career. I asked him what made a good manager and his response was, ‘Good players’! That’s why Linfield won the league year in, year out.
“I played under Roy Walker and he was a manager who would have inspired you. Roy Coyle wasn’t like that. He had a team that he believed in and the players were good enough to go out and win trophies.
“That Linfield team was like a well-oiled machine. There was also a fear of losing your place. If you didn’t perform you could be out and may not have got back in for three months. There was an intensity at Linfield. That’s what set us apart.
“Glentoran had a fantastic side with great players like Billy Caskey, Jim Cleary and others. They could beat Linfield but then would lose to lesser teams. Linfield never did that.”
With every passing season at Linfield, tough-tackling midfielder Doherty’s influence grew. So too his hard man reputation.
“I never saw myself as a hard man of football. I prefer to see myself as a footballer who was competitive. To me, Kirk Hunter, Packie McAllister and Billy Caskey were real tough guys,” says Doherty, an architect by trade, whose dad Alex and brothers Dean and Clark also played in the Irish League.
“I’m not a tough person. I’m quite an emotional person as my girls would tell you. Yes, I had a desire to win a tackle, but purely to win the ball, not to hurt anyone.”
Many felt Doherty would stay at Windsor forever. That changed in 1994 when Trevor Anderson was in charge.
“Leaving Linfield was tough but it was Trevor Anderson’s choice,” insists Doherty.
“I was the club captain and after a poor result around Christmas he asked in the changing room, ‘What’s going wrong?’ and I stood up and said, ‘What’s going wrong is you are picking players that shouldn’t be playing and you are only picking them because you paid big money for them’. I never started again for Linfield.
“The disappointing thing for me was that was right in the middle of my testimonial year and I got to the end of that and it was as if I was walking away from Linfield. I was called a bit of a Judas over that and it hurt me because I had given the club my life for a long period of time.
“I didn’t want to leave but I was 30 at the time and I needed to be playing week in, week out and Glenavon gave me that opportunity.”
In that era, those who left Linfield tended to play out time elsewhere without making a major impact. Not Lee Doherty. He inspired Glenavon to a host of trophy successes, though not the one he wanted.
“When I was in discussions with Glenavon, Adrian Teer (chairman) said they were investing a lot in me and I said, ‘Sign me and we’ll win the league’. That’s the only time I felt I let someone down in football because it didn’t happen,” says Doherty.
“We finished second but with the players we had we should have won it. Dermot O’Neill, Stephen Caffrey, Tony Grant, Glenn Ferguson, Raymond McCoy, Mark Glendinning, Gary Smyth and Darren Murphy were in that team.
“On the flip side we were suc-