Gerrard’s name will only get him so far now Saudi gold is starting to look so tarnished

THERE is a nice video of Steven Gerrard before the good times became the bad times. It’s surprisingly recent — it was shot a little over four months ago. His side, Al Ettifaq, were joint top of the Saudi Pro League after winning his first couple of fixtures and the scene could have been any dressing room in football.

Players we mostly wouldn’t recognise were singing, dancing, banging on tables and in walked their famous manager, beaming a grin but offering a few words of caution. ‘Only two games,’ Gerrard told them, not that they stopped what they were doing. And fair enough. The party had started and so far, so perfect.

But he’s a pretty wise fella, Gerrard. Earnest. Sensible and serious for the large part. And he won his first two games in charge at Aston Villa, too, so that chasm between a fast start and a happy ending is well known to him.

Now, history seems to be repeating at a point when Gerrard cannot afford to make another managerial stumble. If they still bang on tables at Al Ettifaq, the footage does not make it to their social media channels. There is conspicuously less of him as well these days, because novelty fades and quicker still when the form stinks. Which it does. Gerrard’s team is eighth, has not won for two months and in the past nine games his side has scored just three goals.

It is quite a run. Saudi riches were not liberally shared with Al Hazm, who are bottom of the table and held Al Ettifaq to a 1-1 draw. Same goes for Al Taawoun, who are punching above their weight under a manager in his 32nd job and beat them 2-0.

Al Shebab are 11th, Al Akhdoud 12th, Al Fayha 14th and Al Raed 13th — Gerrard’s sides, including Jordan Henderson and Gini Wijnaldum, could not score against any of them.

These are not teams from the big four backed by the sovereign wealth fund, they are the rank and file, filled with native players and the occasional Brazilian wanderer.

AL ETTIFAQ aren’t among the designated elite, either, but they had the backing to get Gerrard, Henderson, Wijnaldum and Moussa Dembele and to sign a 27-year-old Demarai Gray after a 36-game season at Everton.

So they are bracketed within the Saudi masterplan, but these results are not — nor is an average attendance of 7,800 in a stadium built for four times more.

It is dire and mainly occurring out of sight, except the Wayne Rooney sacking at Birmingham and the purgatory of Frank Lampard has made us think once more about the discrepancies between great players and great managers. Gerrard, so promising at Glasgow Rangers, where he won the title, and so ineffective at Villa, where his time has been put in a cold light by Unai Emery’s success, is trending fast towards that list.

His name will protect him for only so long in Saudi Arabia. It is a somewhat troubling picture for one who has brought us so many great moments and plenty of us will hope he can find altitude when the Saudi season resumes next month.

But his difficulties, and the fact Al Ettifaq are in a worse spot than when he arrived, also throws up the question of where he goes next if a volatile club turn to an 11th manager in six years.

I never liked Gerrard’s move there. Alongside whatever else we say about the kingdom, his decision reeked of a lack of ambition for a 43-year-old.

These gold rushes are different with players. Cristiano Ronaldo was at the end of a chapter, so too Karim Benzema and Henderson, and Neymar was moving into that space — you can understand it, even if you don’t like it.

But Gerrard was a young manager at a key junction in his career. It was surely too soon to cash in at a lower standard of the game, especially when he had so much to prove after his 11 months at Villa.

When he needed to show he could hack the gig, to show he could get up off the mat, to make the most of the extra opportunities that all big names get and to remind us why he was once seen as a Liverpool manager-in-waiting, he went for the money.

The route chosen was wildly disappointing from someone who used to read the game so well.

His problem is that management is a looks business as well as a results game. If you take the money and win, you might get away with a brief step into a league that is heaven and earth away from the elite end of football’s ecosystem.

IT worked for Nuno Espirito Santo at Al Ittihad, but he was older. He had a body of work behind him and he won the Saudi title and cup. Gerrard? Taking the money in your third job and then going backwards at Al Ettifaq would be a far harder sell to the next owner.

The Rooney parallel is obvious in this of all weeks, though I have more sympathy for the latter. Rooney has tried and failed, but he took a harder road of two Championship jobs at Birmingham and Derby County and one at an unspectacular club in the US, DC United in Washington. It didn’t work out and that’s sport, but he was striving. It is far trickier to say the same for Gerrard.

It might be the case that he can spend his way out of trouble this month and possibly he can coach them to improvement. But either way, he needs to show he can make an impact.

If he fails and Al Ettifaq pull the plug, Gerrard will get other chances because of his profile.

But when we talk about the bottomless pit of Saudi wealth, we should also acknowledge that reputations can be lost down the same well.

It is regrettable, and a little sad, that a footballing great from these parts has put himself in such a precarious position.