Maybe moving to Villa wasn’t a good idea after all, Stevie
There’s no need to give Steven Gerrard a penny for his thoughts. He already has millions of them in his piggy bank to save him from thinking too much.
But the Aston Villa manager must
be pondering what might have been this week.
Sure, he’s working in the best league in the world – but sitting in the bottom half with eff all to play for in May must feel like being trapped in some kind of purgatorial twilight zone for a guy used to chasing trophies at this time of year.
Gerrard will be proud of his former club but there must be a part of him wondering what if he’d just stuck around Rangers a little longer.
Maybe he could have played a part in one of the greatest football stories ever told, rather than reading about it before bedtime.
Not that it matters now. Gerrard played his part in assembling this heroic Gers side on a shoestring in European financial terms.
But there’s no guarantee he would have been able to pull off the same achievement.
Gio van Bronckhorst has. He’s the one who has shown he is more flexible than a yoga instructor when it comes to shaping his squad from whatever he has available.
Gerrard grumbled about not having the dosh to take Rangers to the next level.
This quietly spoken Dutchman has done it in spectacular style without a hint of a fuss.
He’s sent out more formations than the Red Arrows to see off Borussia Dortmund, Red Star, Braga and RB Leipzig.
Don’t forget he had to rescue the group stage as well after being left behind the cue ball.
Now he’s on the verge of Ibrox immortality – if he’s not already there.
Regardless of what happens in Seville on May 18, this has been one of the finest achievements in football. Not Scottish football – world football.
Name another club who have been through what Rangers have suffered and got to this stage.
We’ll wait. The likes of Fiorentina, Parma and Leeds United came back after going belly-up and enjoyed success. But not like this.
They didn’t have to take the slaggings for 10 years of balls stuck in hedges, opposition managers watching their team win while he was getting married, boardroom battles in a gazebo and much, much more over the brutal Banter Years.
It’s incredible to be in this position right now and if Rangers pull this off in Spain it will be a tale up there with 11 men born within 30 miles of Celtic Park lifting the European Cup, Sir Alex Ferguson’s fishing
village seeing off Real Madrid and wee Jim’s corner shop taking on the continent’s supermarkets.
There’s an old saying among scribes in these parts, ‘The football is s**** but the stories are world class’.
Well this Rangers story is world class – and so is the football.
It’s a shame the players are not allowed to tell their own stories, of course, due to this weird media clamping.
But the yarns they are weaving on the pitch is still best-seller material.
Don’t forget, the entire Gers line up the other night cost less in transfer fees than Tore Andre Flo.
It was unbelievable, ridiculous – chuck any word you want at it.
But soon it will go back to the lessons being learned by Gerrard. There will be some big decisions to be made by some this summer.
Connor Goldson, Alfredo Morelos and Ryan Kent have contracts that are running down and the phone will surely start ringing for James Tavernier who is the leading scorer in the Europa League this year and who has stats like Marilyn Monroe’s measurements.
But these guys need to think carefully. Listen to John Lundstram the other night when he said he thought he’d never top the feeling of running out in the English Premier League – only to have that epic night in Glasgow’s south side blow it out of the water.
The Rangers story is not done yet. Victory in Seville would bring Champions League nights back to Ibrox as well as statues being built outside the ground.
These players might end up with a few more pennies if they decide to go elsewhere and that’s fair enough.
But they should know they would be giving something up you can’t put a price on.
This must be one of the greatest achievements in history of world football