GERRARD MUST SHOW FAITH IN STEWART
THERE would have been a few eyebrows raised among the home faithful at Ibrox when Greg Stewart was named in the Rangers starting line-up on Saturday.
But if any fans were questioning his involvement in a game of that magnitude against Aberdeen, he proved them wrong quite emphatically.
Stewart was the best player on the pitch by a distance. He ripped his former team apart as Rangers romped to a 5-0 victory.
It was like seeing a player reborn. This wasn’t the same Greg Stewart who had to endure two awkward loan spells with the Dons when he was played out of position.
This was the Greg Stewart who terrorised defences in the Premiership during a brilliant spell with Kilmarnock in the opening half of last season.
His goals and assists were a major part of why Killie were top of the league at one point last December. God knows what they might have achieved had he stayed instead of leaving for Pittodrie in January.
Watching him on Saturday also offered a reminder of the talent that twice saw him nominated for the PFA Player of the Year when he was at Dundee.
He would surely have been nominated for a third time — and would actually have had a decent shout of winning it — had he stayed at Rugby Park last year.
When he’s in this kind of form, he’s one of the best players you’ll find anywhere in the top flight. He offers so much guile and artistry on that lovely left peg.
The key to getting the best out of him is to either play him centrally as a No 10 or, if you start him wider, allow him the freedom to cut inside.
That’s where Rangers might have won a watch here. With Stewart cutting inside and James Tavernier going on the overlap down the right, that looks like a natural combination that could work wonders.
The only surprise to me in all of this is that it’s taken until now for Steven Gerrard to hand Stewart a first start in the league.
I found Gerrard’s post-match comments on Saturday a bit strange, given how good Stewart had been and how key he had been to the victory.
He admitted that Stewart had taken his chance, before then saying that the performance had ‘given me something to think about’.
Sorry, but what is there to think about? The answer is staring Gerrard square in the face because, on that form, Stewart is his most creative player.
As a player, I wouldn’t like to hear my manager saying something like that about me. It’s almost as if he’s saying: ‘Okay, so Greg’s part of my second string, but I might think about playing him more in future’.
Basically, it sounds as if Gerrard still isn’t fully convinced, which begs the question of why he chose to sign him in the first place?
Stewart is far better than that. Look at the abundance of wide players at the club — Jordan Jones, Ryan Kent, Sheyi Ojo and Brandon Barker.
Then there’s the likes of Glenn Middleton and Jake Hastie out on loan, with forgotten men like Jamie Murphy and Eros Grezda in the background. Rangers have stockpiled wide players.
When he’s on top form, I’d take Stewart ahead of any of them. It’s time for Gerrard to show more trust and faith in him. After his performance on Saturday, the Rangers manager shouldn’t still be speaking about him like he’s some kind of outcast.
He’s a proven operator — and exactly the type of player Rangers lacked so badly in their Old Firm defeat to Celtic a few weeks ago.
Gerrard made the mistake that day of picking a team that had no wingers, something which I’m sure he’ll have learned from.
With the injuries to Kent and Jones at the moment, it was almost as if he was forced to pick Stewart on Saturday by default.
But he’ll be glad he did because he was the catalyst for a hugely impressive victory that saw Rangers close the gap on Celtic at the top of the table.
Timing is everything. I know that, from my own experience, it gives you such a boost when you watch your rivals drop points in the lunchtime kick-off.
If the roles had been reversed and Rangers had faltered earlier, there’s no way Celtic would have slipped up like they did at Easter Road.
It provides you with so much motivation to capitalise on your rivals dropping points unexpectedly and I’m sure it would have fired Rangers up.
In Stewart, Gerrard had the perfect man to make sure his team pounced on the opportunity.