Gerrard is proving at Rangers he can one day manage Liverpool
Hrookie manager has the perfect platform at Ibrox, with title about to be won, and does not need to leave
European campaigns have been the bedrock of his reign, enabling him to fine-tune his style
Let’s cut to the chase and sum up the broad reaction in England when Steven Gerrard lifts his first title, possibly as early as this weekend: “It’s only Scotland.”
That is the disrespectful tone Celtic and Rangers managers have had to deal with for more than 30 years.
Many outside the Glasgow bubble fail to grasp the stature of those clubs, how demanding and suffocating the pressure can be, and how challenging it is going head-to-head with your neighbours every year. The media coverage and scrutiny is intense. Unlike England – where there are several clubs sharing the limelight and a general acceptance that you can have a good season without winning the title – for the Old Firm it is all or nothing; win or bust.
Even those coaches who have been serial winners in Scotland have had to fight for credibility down south.
This is not just the tainted view of English supporters. Collecting league titles in Scotland is no guarantee of securing one of our biggest jobs. Brendan Rodgers was given a brilliant opportunity at Leicester City, but he was still headhunted from Celtic by a team seeking to get into the Champions League rather than established in it.
Martin O’neill took on a comparable position when his next role after leaving Celtic in 2005 was Aston Villa. But when Gordon Strachan and Neil Lennon left Scotland, they joined Middlesbrough and Bolton Wanderers respectively, both in the Championship at the time.
If Gerrard continues to win big in Scotland, he is sure to land many Premier League job offers, with the implication that managing a mid-table team in England is more attractive than being Rangers or Celtic coach.
I am not convinced that applies in Gerrard’s case. There was a time when I might have gone along with the idea that Rangers were a good first stepping stone for my former
Liverpool team-mate, and he should have his eye on a swift Premier League return in readiness for an inevitable Anfield reunion later in his career.
Having seen what he is building at Rangers, I do not believe he has to leave Ibrox and prove himself anywhere else. Certainly not yet.
He has obviously fallen in love with the club and Glasgow and looks to be settling in for the long haul. Look at his reaction against Livingston at half-time on Wednesday, when he was sent off for being livid at the decision not to
award Alfredo Morelos a penalty. Fully committed. All in. Despite the title being done and dusted for weeks, every point matters. He has caught the Rangers bug and is immersed in the club.
What is so impressive about Gerrard’s success is the circumstances and manner in which he has achieved it. When he moved to Scotland, it took guts. Whoever took on the Rangers job 2½ years ago had to focus on preventing Celtic winning 10 titles in a row. Gerrard was going to be judged on that, not as a novice
coach making his way. With Celtic settled under Rodgers, and Rangers recovering from a prolonged era of instability, that was a massive ask for someone in their first major management job. While Gerrard’s reputation helped secure the position, it also increased the pressure on him to deliver instantly.
Sadly, in the cut-throat world of football, there are many waiting, or even hoping, for you to fall on your backside, resentful that such a position is given to a high-profile personality based on their playing career rather than coaching experience. Many top-class players of Gerrard’s generation have struggled as a coach.
Gerrard had to overcome that cynicism, and although it is his domestic dominance that will bring the reward of his first silverware as a coach (still unbeaten in the league this season), his work in Europe will have caught the attention of those who were wondering what kind of manager he would become.
Since 2018, he has won 23 European games – one more than the legendary Walter Smith, who was one win away from the Champions League final in 1993 and led Rangers to the Uefa Cup final in 2008. He is five short of a club record, reaping financial rewards from two campaigns in which Rangers qualified through the Europa League group stages, and in with a good chance of beating Slavia Prague for a place in the quarter-finals.
The European campaigns have been the bedrock of his reign, enabling him to fine-tune a style that takes plenty from what he learnt at Liverpool under Rodgers and his brief time as youth coach under Jurgen Klopp – pressing high, keeping possession, always on the front foot.
Europe has also raised muchneeded cash to allow Gerrard to keep building the squad.
Rangers have given him the ideal platform to develop the winning habit as a manager, and can give him Champions League experience. Who else can offer him that at the moment? And certainly not with a full and vibrant support, as he will have when Champions League nights return to Ibrox next season, provided they qualify.
As with Klopp’s relationship with the Kop, emotion in a stadium and affection from the supporters is a drug for a coach. The chance to do it again when stadiums are full will drive Gerrard on.
When you have that level of trust, loyalty and adulation, it is not easily sacrificed for a club in the bottom half of the Premier League. A character such as Gerrard will always live for trophies, and to feel he is where his highest ambitions are matched and can be realistically satisfied.
Gerrard will want to dominate Scottish football for several years and build a side capable of making Champions League headlines.
When Rangers were searching for the right man in 2018, they needed a personality with the clout, self-confidence and skill to take on a formidable opponent in Rodgers’s Celtic. They needed someone prepared to work under the shadow of the 10-in-a-row obsession of both Glasgow clubs. Gerrard has relished and overcome that challenge.
The biggest tribute you can pay him is that it is now Celtic who need to find someone of the required ilk to take on Gerrard.
Best of luck with that. There is a new king of Scottish football and he looks ready to reign for a while.
Shaky foundations
For any team at any level, everything starts at the back. When Fabinho was paired with Ozan Kabak against Chelsea on Thursday, it was Liverpool’s 19th central defensive pairing this season. Read that again and ask how and why the question of where it is going wrong can still be asked with a bewildered expression. Nineteen. No partnerships can form, nor relationships evolve.
Classy opponents have been adept at taking advantage. Many have pointed out how effective Fabinho and Jordan Henderson have been in their emergency centreback roles, but it has come at a cost further upfield, where Liverpool have lacked their usual dynamism, experience and energy.
Ally that with Klopp’s insistence on persisting with his high-line defence, no matter who is available and who the opponent, and the result is goals such as that by Richarlison in the Merseyside derby, or the build-up to Mason Mount’s winner when N’golo Kante had to do little more than send the midfielder into acres of space. Klopp has a plan A, and his idea of a tweak is more plan A+ than a pragmatic plan B.
Front three dry up
For three years, Liverpool’s front three were the envy of Europe. Since the start of this season there have been ongoing questions as to whether time has caught up with them, or they have been worked out. Klopp has batted away the fatigue questions, but individual cases require deeper scrutiny.
Sadio Mane does not appear to have had a break since he joined Liverpool, his international commitments meaning he has barely enjoyed a full pre-season. He has not been himself lately, lacking a yard of sharpness, but he goes into every game with two man-markers and no longer has the reinforcement of high-pressing midfielders aiding and abetting his forward runs.
As with the rest of the line-up, we cannot yet be sure if this is more of a system malfunction or a longerterm cause for concern. Klopp certainly attributes it to the personnel around his front players.
Roberto Firmino has never been prolific, which is why his inconsistency has been a regular talking point. Top scorer Mohamed Salah has been immune from most criticism, and his demeanour when substituted on Thursday was not new. He reacts the same way when he is subbed in the 91st minute, although his agent choosing that moment to tweet a full stop is curious.
Salah gave a strange interview to a Spanish newspaper in December, which was deliberately ambiguous in allowing those who saw it as an appeal for a new deal or an invitation for offers to pick a side. If Liverpool fail to qualify for the Champions League, the Egyptian’s body language – and his representative’s social media output – will continue to grab headlines.
Full-backs shackled
Last season, Klopp’s full-backs Trent Alexander-arnold and Andrew Robertson could surge forward secure in the knowledge Henderson, Georginio Wijnaldum, Fabinho or James Milner would cover their runs as “false full-backs”. Beyond that, they had the added layer of security of Virgil van Dijk’s or Joe Gomez’s pace. It gave them the freedom to play as extra attackers.
This year there has been more caution and hesitancy, the pair more aware of their defensive responsibilities because they have gone from junior partners to the senior figures in the back four. As well as that, the defensive duo have also not had a break for three years, with Klopp unable to rotate because he cannot sacrifice experienced defenders.
Thiago hamstrung
When Thiago Alcantara moved from Bayern Munich, he was meant to be the cherry on the cake. Little could he have known how the ice beneath would melt. Thiago was signed to enhance, not radically alter Liverpool’s midfield. He is a majestic footballer, his weight of pass putting one in mind of a golfer who intuitively knows the right club. His first couple of appearances at Chelsea and Everton – when Liverpool were at full strength – offered a tantalising glimpse of what he was supposed to be and might have been.
Instead, he has never been part of a trio with Henderson and Fabinho, making all the judgment of his debut season tainted. Thiago’s physical attributes are evidently not his strength. He is not as quick as Henderson and Fabinho, nor does he press as high up the pitch. That is not what he was bought to do, but he has been forced to adapt, while expected to be the main playmaker alongside the exciting novice Curtis Jones and Wijnaldum.
Support cast miss their mark
If anyone needs a convenient scapegoat for Liverpool’s problems, look no further than the men in suits. The Fenway Sports Group’s self-sustaining model was the envy of most Premier League clubs a year ago. That same philosophy is taken as the stick with which to beat Liverpool’s board now the title defence has gone wrong, particularly given it took too long to sign replacement centre-backs in January and of those signed, one (Ben Davies) has not yet played, and the other (Kabak)
initially looks a long way off being the required standard.
Clearly, that delay and the inability to field world-class centre-backs – whether through injury or the affordability of targets – has wrecked the season. Should FSG take the hit for that?
Thiago and Diogo Jota looked astute purchases in September. But the back-up players, whose contribution was minimal in the last two years, have been a let-down; Alex Oxlade-chamberlain is not yet the same since serious injury, Xherdan Shaqiri inconsistent, Divock Origi anonymous and Naby Keita too often injured.
Unless every detail is perfect – from the signings to injury luck – dreams can fall apart quickly. If FSG decides, as it often does, to keep quiet rather than offer soothing words, reassuring actions will be needed when it comes to backing the manager in the summer.
Silence is deafening
People appear to be sick of hearing it from Liverpool, so maybe the words of the Manchester City manager about how lockdown football has affected the champions more than most will resonate.
There will come a time when Klopp and other Premier League and Champions League managers will talk more freely about the challenges he has referenced over the past years. For now, every time he speaks on his Zoom calls, you sense his lip being bitten until it bleeds. There must have been times when the Liverpool manager has felt like pausing and reminding the world, “You do know what you are watching is not real football, don’t you?” And that is before we delve deeper into the injury list and the more serious trauma of the personal tragedies he and some of his players have endured.
But he cannot, because even mild efforts to highlight unusual circumstances are ridiculed as “an excuse” for underperformance or being so-called “bad champions”.
So we are willingly engaged in this prolonged experiment of pandemic football because the alternative of nothing is too tedious for viewers, too barren for those whose jobs rely on the game continuing, and too expensive for the executives who need the broadcast revenue.
It is no excuse for Liverpool toiling in seventh place, and yes, every club has to deal with it. Nevertheless, although not so many people are mentioning it as much as at the climax to last season, this is the one which ought to have the asterisk next to it. If Liverpool are as bad as this a year from now, they will be in more serious trouble. Until then, we are judging them amid the illusion of normality in these most abnormal circumstances.