BOSSY BOOTS

Stevie G admits being a manager still hasn’t stopped his desire to lace up and get back onto the pitch

BY

STEVEN GERRARD admits he still has moments when he just wants to put his boots on and get in the trenches.

The Aston Villa manager, unmatched during his playing days when it came to taking a game by the scruff of the neck, says it is a feeling that intensifies while he’s watching helplessly from the touchline.

Liverpool’s legendary skipper now cajoles his Villa team from the sidelines but said being a manager never quells the desire to return to the battlefield.

Gerrard (showing his emotions, below) detests losing and, with Villa on a run of four defeats and a draw, he revealed the warrior in him is never far from the surface. “You just want to put your boots on and get involved,” said the former England skipper.

“You just never lose that urge or that feeling. Well, I haven’t anyway. In front of the cameras I try to be quite balanced but, no, I don’t like losing. If I said I was OK with it then I would be telling lies.

“It’s my job to stimulate the players in a different way, obviously, now I’m a manager and a coach.”

But the 41-year-old revealed there is absolutely no substitute for being out there in the thick of it.

The 2006 FA Cup final unofficially bears his name, such was his extraordinary impact. ‘The Gerrard Final’ tag was bestowed because of the way the Kop skipper dragged Liverpool from the brink of defeat with a thunderous 35-yard stoppage-time equaliser against West

Ham. The score finished 3-3 after extra-time with Liverpool running out penalty shoot-out winners after one of the greatest finals of all time.

A year earlier in Istanbul Gerrard’s man-of-the-match performance helped Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool pull off their miracle comeback after trailing AC Milan 3-0 at half-time.

Gerrard scored the first of three goals in six madcap minutes and then lifted the famous trophy after penalties. Now he has swapped the captain’s armband for a suit and tie but his demands are still the same.

“I’m all-in to stimulate the players and support, challenge and provoke them in any way I can to try to benefit the team,” said Gerrard, who spent three years as Rangers manager before moving to the West Midlands last November. “But that also needs to come from the t eam .

The experienced players have to galvanise us. It’s their team, their journey. I need my big players to stand tall.”

You want to put your boots on and get involved.you never lose that