MILES AWAY
Gerrard tells Rangers to forget about title after dire draw with Saints
STEVEN GERRARD admitted there was no evidence of Rangers being capable of mounting a title challenge as his team tripped up at home to St Johnstone.
Yesterday’s stalemate at Ibrox hands Celtic the chance to stretch eight points clear at the top of the Ladbrokes Premiership with a victory over Kilmarnock at Rugby Park.
And the performance left Gerrard lamenting a host of ‘very concerning’ shortcomings with his group that he highlighted after thanking his stand-in goalkeeper for sparing Rangers from defeat.
The Ibrox boss said: ‘We pay respects to St Johnstone because their game plan worked very well and Wes (Foderingham) has helped us get a point.
‘I’ve been seduced in as, through the week, the players looked like they were looking forward to playing back at Ibrox. We knew Tommy Wright would set them up to frustrate. They offer a challenge and say “come and beat
us” but we didn’t have enough around the pitch to find an answer to their challenges.
‘That’s very concerning for me. We lacked leadership and I’m struggling to find any positives. Right now forget titles and closing gaps.
‘The reality is perform like that in front of 50,000? There’s your evidence. You don’t need me to say this, that or the other.
‘If you have a group of lads and they give you that across the board, that’s not what’s required at Rangers. You’re miles away from it.
‘At the beginning of the season we had direction, urgency and people performing like Rangers players. They were pressing and hunting. It was great to see and we gave them praise for it.
‘There was none of that. There were the normal players I can trust but I just felt we weren’t going to achieve it. We need to look at ourselves and admit it wasn’t good enough.’
Jermain Defoe led the line and was accompanied by Kyle Lafferty midway through the second half, but Rangers drew a blank a week after drawing 0-0 at Kilmarnock in the William Hill Scottish Cup minus their suspended top scorer Alfredo Morelos.
When asked if he needed team-mates to step up and atone for the absence of Morelos, Gerrard replied: ‘Big time. I felt for Jermain.
‘I never saw a slide pass, a decent cross, decent combination. Anything I’d seen in previous days.
‘The cop out would be to say there was no Morelos, Ryan Jack and Scott Arfield but I believe we picked a team and have a squad with quality to beat St Johnstone if we play at an acceptable level — and that wasn’t acceptable.’
While Morelos is eligible for the cup replay at Ibrox on Wednesday and Arfield has prospects of recovering from a calf problem, Jack is a major doubt after twisting his ankle in training on Friday.
A disconsolate Daniel Candeias rued one of the few genuine goalscoring opportunities carved out by Rangers in the face of an impressive display from St Johnstone’s defensive unit.
The Portuguese blazed over before being replaced by Lafferty and offered his apologies. He confessed: ‘It
was a bad day for us. We now have to look at ourselves, the mistakes we made in the game.
‘We need a reaction on Wednesday night. We have to put in a great performance and win the game, we need to produce for the supporters. There are too many games left to say anything about the title.
‘But, of course, if you play like we did today you don’t deserve to win the league.
‘Everyone was disappointing. I had a chance to score in the second half but when the team aren’t playing well, you have mistakes. I’ll look at my mistakes and try to be better in the next game. I’m sorry for that performance.’
We had a lack of leadership... it was not acceptable