Gerrard is thriving on Benitez blueprint to make Gers secure
seeing off Maribor, Gerrard said: “For games like Thursday night, you certainly try to dig into the experiences you had as a player and the coaches you worked under. “Rafa was the master of defending away in Europe and being hard to play against. Then he’duse the power of Anfieldin the home leg to win the tie. “As a coach, he helped me become a bet t er p l ay e r t a ctica l ly at L ive r p o o l . W h e n Rafa got me I couldn’t be trusted fully, in a positional sense. “I had too much energy and would lose my slot in midfield at important times.
“I probably had too much enthusiasm to go forward and get goals. I was playing w ith a bi t o f an ego.
“Individual performances don’t always get you the right results in Eu ropean football. It’s all about the team, the structure and the organisation as we proved against Maribor. “Rafa was the master at it and he im pr oved that side o f my ga me m a s sivel y as a player. “Theimportant thing for me coming here was that teams clearly used to fancy playing against Rangers. “They would fancy themselves to create chances and score goals. “We have to make them fear us. When you come up against Rangers now we’ll be hard to beat, organised and have players prepared to put their bodies on the line. “That’s what we’ve got at the moment and it’s important we continue it. “Am I surprised at how quickly we’ve achieved that? It’s something that’s difficultto put a time on. “You try to get a lot ofinformation across to the players. As a staff,we’ve done a lot of classroom work with them in terms of organisation and positioning. “Fitness is also a big part of it. Therehas been a lot of stuffbut the players have taken i t on b oa r d . I n t er m s of w h a t t h e y ’ ve g iven me and how well they’ve done, they’ve surprised me a bit.
“But if you have good players who are w illing to learn, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise after all.”
Such is Rangers’ hectic schedule at this early stage of the campaign, Gerrard will tinker with his team for the Betfred Cup clash with Kilmarnock today. Despite all the justified optimism around Ibrox right now, he warned that they will hit a rough patch in his first season. For all that, the Ibrox boss is convinced that when they do, they’ll have the strength of character to bounce back. He said: “Rangers are and always have been a big scalp for opposition teams. “For Kilmarnock I’ll need to make some changes to keep energy and freshness in the team. “Theschedule is tough right now but we won’t use that as an excuse. “Thereality is, any manager or player will tell you that playing Thursday/Sunday away games is a big ask. “But in every challenge the players have been presented with so far, they’ve done themselves extremely proud. “Offthe back of Europa games we’ve gone to Aberdeen and been reduced to 10 men. We’ve faced St Mirren and gone down to 10 men. “We’ve answered all the questions so far. “We’ll definitely have a setback, we’ll have a turbulent spell. “But it’s about being together which means you’re able to come through the lows as well as the highs.” The high every Rangers fan wants to experience again is a Premiership title win which would halt Celtic’s charge to 10 -i n- a-row. TheirOld Firm rivals suffered a double blow last week when they lost to Hearts before being turfed out of the Champions League by AEK Athens. Gerrard is refusing to take any notice of what’s going on at Park head and will instead tr y to generate his own feelgood factor in Govan. He said: “Time will tell if Celtic not getting to the Champions League group stage will help us close the gap on them. “For us, it’s just important to build on the momentum and try to improve.
“I believe there is more to come from us individually and collectively.
“I want to try to help the players by adding one or two more in the coming weeks. I’ve made no secret of that. “That’s to make sure we’re right for ever y challenge, in every competition. “It’s not a case of being obsessed by one team or our neighbours. It’s about building on w ha t we’r e tr y i n g to d o here.”