5.30PM, PREMIER SPORTS 1
BY GAVIN BERRY STEVEN GERRARD admitted the Scottish Cup could be the best chance of ending a nine-year major trophy drought as he urged the real Rangers to stand up at Tynecastle tonight.
The baffled boss was left scratching his head at the performance on their last Gorgie trip when he claimed his side were “unrecognisable” following a shock 2-1 loss.
That is the only win the Jambos – who also held Gers to a 1-1 draw earlier in the season – have recorded against top-flight opposition in the last three months and it derailed the
Ibrox championship challenge.
Ahead of tonight’s quarter-final clash, Gerrard was asked if the Scottish Cup is the most realistic chance of serious silverware since 2011. “Possibly,” said the Ibrox boss. “We have a really exciting draw to look forward to in Europe and we have progressed well in that competition. We’ve progressed in the League Cup but unfortunately we couldn’t get over that final hurdle. “Of course, I am disappointed with where we are in the league as of now. There are still games to play. It’s about churning out results and performances and seeing where it takes us. “But there is no point in looking too far ahead. We just need to look to Hearts as that’s the next game. “It would be nice to reward the fans with another trip to Hampden. “The supporters in midweek blew us away, the support was incredible, so I want that to be on the players’ minds going into the game at Tynecastle. “The only thing we have to prove is that the real Rangers are there for the challenge. I was pretty strong in my assessment of the last 90 minutes there, I didn’t recognise the performance. “But Hearts have beaten us once since we have been here. They are a good team, we respect them but more often than not we have gone there, shown the real Rangers and got the outcome we have wanted.
“So hopefully the real Rangers will turn up and if we do I am confident we will be OK. Hearts will want to be the team to knock us out of this competition.
“We need to be ready for that. We have an honest group of players in the dressing room and more often than not they give you everything they’ve got.
“But there have been games where we haven’t hit the heights we would have liked and haven’t got the results we would have wanted.
“It is my job to try to eradicate those type of performances. The players know when they’re not at it individually and collectively. We have also suffered at times from big individual mistakes that we need to try to eradicate as well. That will give us a much better chance of getting the results we want.
“We are looking for the level of consistency we had from the beginning of the season to the winter break.
“We’ve shown flashes of individual performances that we can get back to that but the idea from now is to find that consistency.
“We are really excited for this game. We really enjoy the environment at Tynecastle, it is a fantastic stadium but in any game – home or away – we always stress the importance of a cool head because the job’s tough enough without losing someone to ill-discipline.
“We need to go into Tynecastle very respectful of the challenge that’s in front of us but it’s quite clear the message to the players for this one.
“It’s that if we go there and don’t show our level and what we’re about, or we fall short of where our level needs to be to get the win, then we will find complications again.”
STEVEN GERRARD ON HIS SCOTTISH CUP AMBITIONS