Coulibaly and Jack need checked before Maribor
with the clean sheet in the circumstances. It’s a positive result for us. I would have liked to keep 11 on the pitch and maybewinthegamemoreemphatically but at the end of the day it’s all about three points.”
Gerrard’s attention now turns to Thursday when Rangers take a 3-1 lead into the second leg of their Europa League third qualifying round tie against Maribor in Slovenia.
He faces an anxious wait while the fitness of key midfielders Lassana Coulibaly and Ryan Jack is assessed. Coulibaly limped off in stoppage time yesterday, while Jack is still recovering from the head injury he sustained against Aberdeen last week.
“Coulibaly is hopefully just a fatigue injury,” said Gerrard.
0 Lassana Coulibaly: Injured
“We’ll have to check him out over the next couple of days but we have our fingers crossed it’s not too serious.
“Ryan is progressing well. I’m more confident of him being available now than I was a couple of days after Aberdeen. But he still has to come into a full training session.
“The good thing for me today was realising that if we’re on the back of a European night when we’ve put a hell of a shift in, then I can make some changes subtly to the starting eleven. I can trust the players who come in. If we carry on this run in Europe, I’m going to need that. I’ll need the whole 23 or 24 players to be ready if they are called upon.”
Gerrard has special praise for midfielder Andy Halliday who had been tipped to be part of the player exodus this summer as the Rangers squad has been radically overhauled. Halliday helped Rangers see out their win yesterday as a second-half substitute.
“Andy has been superb since the first day I met him,” said Gerrard. “When you come into a club, you hear different things about players and sometimes it’s not always positive. But I have to take people at face value. He’s been absolutely brilliant as a squad member from day one. He’s done every single training session, everything asked of him and more.
“He’s always ready for that chance and I can trust him now to go in. I’m really pleased with Andy and I think he has got a big part to play.”
St Mirren manager Alan Stubbs was left to rue the manner in which his side went 2-0 down so early in the match.
“It is tough enough as it is when you come to Ibrox and try to get a result but we’ve gifted Rangers two goals,” said Stubbs. “There were two lapses in concentration and that has cost us. The sending-off also changes the game but we didn’t capitalise on that. When you come to the big grounds you sometimes need a little bit of a rub of the green and we just didn’t get that.”