Edmundson will relish battle with the boys for jersey, says Gerrard

STEVEN GERRARD has backed defender George Edmundson to continue putting up a strong fight for a starting jersey this season.

The 21-year-old has made an impressive start to life at Ibrox following his switch from Oldham earlier this summer and he was given the Man of the Match award during the victory over Progres Niederkorn this week.

Manager Gerrard has also added £3million stopper Filip Helander to his squad to compete alongside Connor Goldson and Nikola Katic for a centre-back berth.

And he insists Edmundson has as much chance as anyone of being a starter this season.

Gerrard said: “We set the challenge to the players on day one. When new players come in, we remind them that every shirt is up for grabs. It doesn’t matter whether you cost X amount or you come cheap or you come free, the shirts are up for grabs on a regular basis.

“If you’ve got it, it’s yours to lose. If you haven’t got it, it’s yours to fight for. George is putting a helluva fight up.

“For a lad of 21, it was a very strong performance from him, very dominant. You can see he is very quick.

“I thought he was outstanding for the majority of the game. He gives me some thinking to do but I welcome that.

“Good players do [handle the step up]. Good players want to challenge themselves.

“He made it very clear to me when I sat down with him that he felt ready for this. He understood he was coming as a young lad. It is a big step-up.

“But he made it very clear to me that he is up for the fight. And he has proved that from day one. I haven’t seen an average session from him yet since the first day of pre-season.”

Rangers return to action tomorrow when they play their final friendly of the summer.

Derby are the visitors to Ibrox and Gerrard said: “We’ll use it as another opportunity to push the fitness and that match sharpness so that we get this ruthless streak about us and become more clinical in front of goal. It’s clear there are players who need more game time.

“We will use it as an exercise.

The result’s not very important but we want to go and put in a good performance and give a good account of ourselves.

“The challenge will be very similar to Blackburn.

“We will make changes because a lot of effort has gone into [Thursday night] and I’ll have to monitor them.”