Gerrard has to swap hubris for humility at Ibrox this term
WHEN Steven Gerrard conducted the first post-match interview of his Rangers reign, someone (perhaps Jimmy Bell…) had clearly been in his lughole. After drawing with Aberdeen at Pittodrie in controversial fashion with striker Alfredo Morelos being ordered off, Gerrard said that it “seemed the world was against” his side.
“I believe it’s been happening for seasons,” he added, the dead giveaway that someone had been moaning to him about some percieved sense of persecution. Unless he had been compiling a big book of Rangers’ grievances during his decade or so as a world footballing superstar for Liverpool and England.
At the time, it came across as more than a bit crass, and had fans of smaller clubs howling in laughter that one of the big boys again felt hard done by when it came to getting a fair shake from the officials.
It didn’t seem to augur well either for Gerrard as a rookie manager, getting caught up in the moment all too easily after shipping a late equaliser, losing his cool at the injustice of it all in a match his 10 men had dominated before Aberdeen’s late equaliser.
What was perhaps more worrying was that he also seemed to have bought into the hubris that had remained with Rangers long after the quality of the team on the park had merited it. Praising his team for a fine overall performance would have been justified, but he went on to say his team were clearly “a class above Aberdeen” after one game of the league season.
It became apparent almost immediately though that this lapse was out of character. A more measured, humble Gerrard emerged after that afternoon, striking the right notes in his proclamations more often than not, and likelier to tear strips off his players in public after a poor result than praise them too much after a good win.
Gerrard in fact took the time recently to address the attitude of the younger players within his squad, sending out a warning that those who were getting too big for their boots would be nowhere near him nor his first team.
Gerrard has clearly grown as a manager in his time at Ibrox, and there seems to be design and thought behind everything he now chooses to put into the public domain.
One of the major issues he has to solve ahead of next season is the alarming drop-off in form that Rangers suffered following the winter break, where his team faltered upon their return from Dubai as Celtic motored away with the league.
There will be no winter break next season of course, but perhaps the downturn in fortunes from January onwards these last two years had more to do with the result prior to the overseas jaunt than anything that went on during their sunshine break.
Rangers have won both of the last traditional ‘New Year’ Old Firm fixtures. And won them well. Instead of learning from what happened the previous year though, it seems the temptation to think that the job was done and that Rangers were back where they feel they belong – at the top of the Scottish football tree – was too hard to resist.
The celebrations on the park and with their jubilant supporters at Celtic Park in late December were understandable, but the job was far from done, and Gerrard must have recoiled when he heard the Rangers TV commentary that played over those memorable moments for the club.
“McGregor, Griffiths, Brown – you may have had your own way in recent seasons. Look at your face, look to your laurels,” screamed Tom Miller, who actually seems an amiable chap.
“We’re back, we’re back with a bang! And we’re coming after you, we’re coming after you. Glasgow is red, white and blue.”
Not yet, it wasn’t. Those words may not have come from the football department, but they were noted by the players lamented Gerrard following his side’s disastrous Scottish Cup exit to Hearts back in late February. “I didn’t get the impression that the feeling among my players was the same.”
The fans are clearly as desperate as Gerrard to have success delivered back to the club. Their ‘Going for 55’ display when their side made it back to the Premiership was well meaning enough, but as manager at the time, Mark Warburton, said, his heart sank when he saw it. Their bite on the pitch didn’t match their bark off of it.
Gerrard has assembled a far better squad than Warburton had at his disposal, and there is no doubting he has real talent in the dressing room. The challenge for the Rangers manager may be to persuade his men they haven’t achieved a knockout every time they give Celtic a bloody nose.
‘Stopping the 10’, may depend on it.