TAKE THAT FINAL STEP
McALLISTER IS HOPEFUL REDS CAN INSPIRE RANGERS
WHEN Gary McAllister watched Liverpool finally end that 30-year wait for an English league title, he felt more than just joy as a former player who treasured his time at Anfield.
McAllister saw a lesson. About how to be ruthless. About how to take the final step from contenders to champions. About how to handle whatever challenge comes your way. About how to do so under a huge weight of history and expectation.
It is an example he hopes Rangers can follow next season.
No one is drawing any kind of direct comparison between Anfield and Ibrox in terms of the individual quality of player available or the financial muscle that can be flexed.
McAllister knows perfectly well that the two clubs inhabit different worlds in many ways. But that does not mean there are not similarities in the respective challenges that have confronted them.
Rangers looked poised to genuinely threaten Celtic’s dominance after winning at Parkhead on December 29 last year. Unlike Liverpool, however, Steven Gerrard’s side dramatically declined in those crunch weeks as winter edged towards spring. For all the progress made previously, it is now nine years without either a league title or a major trophy.
McAllister and Gerrard have had plentiful time to reflect on what went wrong. Putting it right is now the obvious task to stop Celtic from claiming ten in a row.
In that respect, the Rangers No 2 recognises how Liverpool’s squad managed to improve year on year to finally reach their goal under Jurgen Klopp’s leadership.
‘I think every player at all times should always look at the very best,’ agreed McAllister, when asked if inspiration could be drawn from his old employers.
‘Obviously, Liverpool are world champions, European champions, English champions.
‘When I look in at Liverpool, it doesn’t matter what type of game it is. If it’s a tactical game, they are tactically very aware. If it is a physical game, they can deal with that. If it’s an open game and you want to take them on at a game of football, they’ll probably win.
‘They are sort of masters at everything. They are not onedimensional. If within a game it becomes physical for a bit, they have players who can cope with that.
‘And that is the demand here. It’s the exact same. The expectation levels are the exact same.
‘You can’t expect to dominate every game you play for 90 minutes. It’s about recognising those little moments within games when we might have to pull together and be a little bit more physical and a bit more tactically aware — or on the flip side, if we are struggling to open up defences, to go and be a bit more expansive.
‘Putting all those things together is what we need to do.’
Last season, a team that excelled in Europe and outplayed Celtic on occasions also showed an alarming vulnerability. Losing twice in five days to opponents then sitting bottom of the Premiership summed up the rapid unravelling of their hopes prior to lockdown.
‘We are trying to instil that selfbelief into the players,’ argued McAllister. ‘You look at some of our performances last season, especially in Europe when you’re up against high-level opposition.
‘The players were able to produce. We’re emphasising that’s where we need to be going into every game.
‘Players can be looked at at some clubs where perhaps you can have one bad 45-minute performance.
‘Rangers are very similar to what I experienced at Liverpool and Leeds United. You simply can’t switch off.
‘Even in a pocket of a game you need to be at it. It’s about keeping the levels high all the time.
‘The work rate has to be there and that self-belief has to be there, so you are a seven-plus every game you play.
‘That’s the demands of being at a club like Rangers, you basically need to win every game.’
Ironing out the flaws will not be easy. Especially not when faced by rivals with their sights set firmly on the record books.
McAllister, however, underlined just how much brain power has been invested into finding those missing percentages.
‘As much as the lockdown has been difficult — and it’s been difficult for everybody, it’s not just the football world that’s found it hard, every walk of life has — it has given us an opportunity to reflect and look at where did we go wrong,’ he added.
‘Where were the little points where we can do better? Over the piece there was a lot of good, we can’t drive ourselves into the doldrums here.
‘But we all know what the games were. We have got to be more clinical. The games that we lost and the games that gave Celtic the lead were due to the fact we were not as clinical as we should have been.
‘In other aspects, we have looked inside those games and we can improve. If we can nullify that, it’s going to be competitive.’
This week’s return to contact
training saw the real start of the build-up towards the August 1 Premiership return. McAllister, though, insisted an eagerness for improvement could not be translated into overworking the players.
‘We had players who were training (on their own) through 12 weeks of lockdown,’ he said.
‘We can’t ask players to do that and come back and train for a six-week pre-season.
‘This is where you have to use your eyes and see where players are at. Yes, the training has picked up a wee bit after going full contact, but we have to be aware that this lead-in to August 1 will be something like four months.
‘We have got to be careful about making sure the players are in the right frame of mind, but also wary of not doing too much.
‘We have been wary, with a couple of days on and a day off. Then a little three-day period before we have a day off. It’s about looking at the numbers and that’s where the sports science comes in.
‘But, the way the players are training, you can see they are enjoying being back at it.’