GERRARD BADLY

Rangers manager must find a linchpin and a leader who can match Parkhead’s captain in the thunder of Old Firm battle

FOR Kevin Thomson, the success or otherwise of Steven Gerrard’s Rangers revolution could boil down to one simple detail: whether or not the Anfield icon can find a Scott Brown-type figure capable of running the Ibrox dressing room as well as winning the midfield battle in a derby.

One of Brown’s closest allies in football from their days breaking through as kids at Hibs, their friendship went out the window when the pair squared off on either side of the Glasgow divide.

During his own four seasons in the Rangers engine room between 2007 and 2010, Thomson lost just once in nine Old Firm clashes.

Yet he watched Brown play the fixture virtually in cruise control last year as Celtic completed an unprecedented double Treble.

The 33-year-old warned that needs to change under Gerrard, who, in his own playing days at Liverpool, made light work of bossing the multi-millionaire midfields of the English Premier League.

‘Scott Brown is fundamental to the way Celtic work — he’s their linchpin,’ said Thomson (below).

‘You take him out of the team and Celtic are not as good. And if you get on top of him and make it difficult for him, they are not as good a team.

‘I’m pretty sure that’s something Steven Gerrard will be focusing on when the big games roll around.

‘I had a good record against Scott. I think I played against him eight or nine times and I think I was only on the wrong end once.

‘I used to wind him up at times about that. But he’s obviously got a far better record (in the Old Firm) than me now, so it’s not an argument any more.

‘He remains the benchmark in Scotland and fair play to him. He’s like a fine wine. He is getting better and better with age, although he’s not looking any better! But he keeps striving to be the best he can be.

‘And whether it’s Rangers, Hibs, Hearts or Aberdeen, he’s the challenge for every player that comes up against Celtic.

‘Steven Gerrard will also be looking around for someone that can run the dressing room at Rangers.

‘You need good changing rooms at good clubs. Steven has done the same thing in every dressing room he was in at Liverpool. That’s the sign of a good captain. ‘And nobody can tell me Scott has not done a good job at that across the city.’ To compete better at the top end of the table, Thomson believes Rangers need a solid backbone to their team under Gerrard. And he insists the return of Allan McGregor to Ibrox represents a fine start. ‘The spine of a team is so important,’ he continued. ‘When you look back to the players Celtic have had, they’ve had Victor Wanyama, Scott Brown, Virgil van Dijk, Fraser Forster, Joe Ledley.

‘And if you go back to the last time Rangers were successful, they had the same. You need to have a basis of seven or eight key players, who are playing every week.

‘That’s what we had under Walter Smith when I was at Rangers. Guys like Nacho Novo, Steven Naismith and Kyle Lafferty would come in. Kris Boyd and Jean-Claude Darcheville would alternate.

‘There was rotation but you had the basis of a team that plays every week and that’s what Celtic have got right now.

‘But I think Allan McGregor is a great signing. He is the best goalie I played with in my career by a country mile and he’s got a bit of character about him.

‘He knows the demands of the club and he’s a great lad who will only help the dressing room.

‘I saw young Ross McCrorie saying recently that Allan McGregor was his hero growing up. Allan being back at the club will drive the young players on and that can only be good for the place.’

A youth coach at Rangers, Thomson has sensed first hand at the club’s Auchenhowie training base the buzz created by the imaginative — if risky — capture of Gerrard.

Their paths have not crossed yet but he recalls playing against Gerrard at Ibrox in a pre-season friendly against Liverpool in 2008.

‘Steven played the first half and I was up against him,’ he said. ‘I got on all right. I tried to kick him a couple of times!

‘They were beating us 1-0 at half-time. We changed the whole team and they beat us 4-0 in the end. But he was a brilliant player.

‘The difficulty being a manager at the top (after previously being a youth coach) is being able to handle the first-team dressing room and demanding respect. But Steven will get that anyway.

‘It is not often a manager gets 10,000 fans at Ibrox to greet him. That shows you the magnitude of his name.

‘For a worldwide icon to be up here in the Scottish game is different class. He is as recognisable in Glasgow as he is anywhere in the world.

‘So he will be used to dealing with the attention that comes at a club of the magnitude of Rangers.

‘I think that he will relish the challenge of being No 1. He will need to believe in himself and stick his chest out like he did through his playing career.

‘The only difference is that if he played well as a player and the team got beat, he wouldn’t get criticised. Whereas if the team loses, it will be on his head now.

‘His reputation will not so much be on the line but he will be aware that he has to win games on a Saturday.’

Kevin Thomson was speaking at the Scottish FA UEFA B Licence, taking place at Oriam, Edinburgh.