The Great Steven Gerrard Swindle? Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Reality

I have been wrong before but this move just doesn't add up

I do not like The Rangers Football Club. I don't dislike them with the same intensity that I did Rangers and I got a great sense of closure when Rangers were liquidated.

But any club emulating what I have always believed to have been a uniquely objectionable sporting institution is worthy of similar derision, though the stakes are less high for me, simply because we won.

Nonetheless, the new neighbours who moved in are noisy and do their best to be vexatious and even (especially) offensive. So, while, on a competitive level, I am much more concerned with Motherwell (for obvious reasons), Hibs, Kilmarnock, Aberdeen and, next season, St Mirren, the happenings at Ibrox are still worthy of comment.

I am not objective, as my first statement acknowledged. I'm biased, and speaking from a position of ill will towards The Rangers.

But, thus-declared, I have my own observations to make about the appointment of Steven Gerrard as the six-year-old Ibrox club's seventh manager.

The Player

Firstly, due respect: I liked him as a player and acknowledge that he was the best English midfielder of his generation and an all-time great English footballer.

But I have never believed that he would make a great manager because he always seemed to have a working-class sense of humility that, while endearing, was born of self-doubt whereas Frank Lampard exuded such confidence, displayed as smug arrogance, as to be guaranteed to rub me up the wrong way.

Don't get me wrong - I have always respected Lampard. In fact, I have always believed that he could make an excellent manager, which I have never believed of Gerrard.

Time will vindicate or condemn my superficial assessments but, amongst the undesired outcomes at The Rangers, Steven Gerrard taking over as boss has never registered.

Age-old Theme

For film buffs and those of a certain vintage, the last six years have been reminiscent of the Hollywood classic, Sunset Boulevard, in which an ageing "once-was" refuses to accept the realities of time and progress, surrendering any last vestiges of dignity in the process.

How Do I Look? Have I still got it?

Her increasingly desperate attempts make for compelling, if sometimes uncomfortable, viewing.

The Rangers demonstrate similar delusions, though the constantly-changing, increasingly-ridiculous storylines could have been churned out by the scriptwriters of River City.

McCoist, McCall, Warburton, Murty, Caixhinha, Murty, Nicholl, Gerrard. Between them, they have won League Two, League One, the Scottish Championship (at the second attempt) and the Petrofac and Dry Blackthorn cups.

Candidates

At the turn of the year, Derek McInnes was approached. Deek, the most transparently dishonest, Ibrox-hearted Aberdeen manager since Jimmy Calderwood, did everything short of baring his bearded backside in order to show his preference for the Glaswegian imposters over his current employers. But still, somehow, he couldn't bring himself to cash in on the points gift he had sent in advance, so troubling were his doubts about the club's financial stability.

That disappointed me as I was quite sure that he would fail at Ibrox. But he also surprised me. Never appearing to be the sharpest tool in the box, Deek nevertheless made a wise judgement.

I wasn’t unduly troubled, though I would have felt better if he had been in the bag – a few months can bring untold changes and that might mean improvements.

And so I wondered if there was the possibility of some new investment, however improbable, from the Bank of China or some such institution looking for a high-profile presence.

In the meantime, the next obvious candidate would have been Steve Clarke. This prospect bothered me a little.

Clarke has a varied and high-level coaching background, has done an excellent job with Kilmarnock and could surely do much more with the sort of funding that, even The Rangers could likely find, given his reputation and extensive list of contacts.

He also comes across as an intelligent guy, which was why I was fairly confident that he would decline any offer.

Then there was Steven Robinson, whose style (if you can call it that) I dislike intensely.

Robinson is a throwback to days that should be long gone, using physicality and a peppering of brutality to good effect against superior football teams.

Robinson is reminiscent of a young Jimmy Nicholl – staunch, no one likes him and he doesn’t care. So, in that sense he would have been a good fit at Ibrox, though not box office.

He’d have straightened them out in terms of being organised and aggressive but he wouldn’t have sold season tickets, so he was a non-starter.

Then there were the “Warnocks”. Of course, there is only one Neil Warnock but I use the term to describe one of those experienced firefighting bosses, who English chairmen turn to when their clubs are in distress.

The kind who have lived with the intense daily pressure, fans calling for their heads, the press pack stitching them up and who, year after year, come back for more.

He is one of many who just might have done a job – at least on an interim basis – finding a tactical approach to favour a desperate situation and maybe even swinging a cup or two.

But what The Rangers got was the much-admired player and virgin manager, Steven Gerrard.

He thinks it's all over: An emotional Gerrard so close to a title

This pleased me greatly, for a number of reasons.

Map-reading

Firstly, “it puts Scottish football on the map” – no, it doesn’t. Scottish football was already on the map and our own Brendan Rodgers has done a great deal to make that happen.

Brendan was the bookies’ second-favourite for the England manager’s job, within a few weeks of joining Celtic, after Roy Hodgson resigned. He has also been quoted as a likely candidate for most half-decent prospects in the English Premier League, including Chelsea, and was heavily-linked with the soon-to-be-vacant Arsenal job.

So, Scottish football is getting plenty of attention from down south and beyond, which is partly why we have Moussa Dembele, Olivier Ntcham and Odsonne Edouard. It was also quite probably a factor in attracting Clarke to Kilmarnock, persuading Youssouf Mulumbu that he could reset his career there and convincing Steven Caulker that a season at Dundee would be worth a try.

These things have all been excellent for Scottish football as has the work Neil Lennon has done at Hibs, building a very promising team.

Having Gerrard in Scotland will generate more interest and perhaps persuade the likes of Aberdeen and Hearts to consider experienced, progressive managers, who would not have been available to them two years ago.

Why else would I be happy that Gerrard is there?

Having a rookie coach thrown into a torrid situation is obviously a bonus for rivals, but the lack of tactical experience is only one element.

Leadership

Leadership is said to be one of Gerrard’s strengths but that is the sort of glib comment uttered by people who have little or no understanding of the skills and qualities associated with leadership in modern-day football.

Personally, I have never felt Gerrard to be a great on-field leader. If he had been, perhaps he would have won a league title in his career.

But, that aside, leading by example is a very different prospect to leading through communication.

This is something that the majority of ex-pros and Scottish football pundits seem never to have considered.

Book-learning

As a hobbyist blogger, I am very much a half-assed amateur when it comes to football. However, I do read about the game and biographical works about football managers reveal some common themes.

First is that a little reading about football demonstrates that, in the modern game, old-fashioned techniques are largely obsolete, partly due to increased education as well as the changing dynamics brought about by huge salaries.

Even in the lower reaches of the English game, managers study various psychological techniques, including drawing on successful leadership and motivation strategies from other sports.

St Mirren’s Jack Ross gives indications of this sort of thinking but he is one of a very few in Scotland to allude to this. I have my doubts about whether Gerrard has been similarly studious but you can guarantee that Pep Guardiola and Zinedine Zidane did so before entering management. Ryan Giggs? I’m guessing not.

Second, is the intense, nigh-on intolerable pressure, which seems to increase year-on-year. Gordon Strachan recently spoke of sitting in Glasgow holding hands with his wife hoping it would get better, when first in the Celtic manager’s job.

But look at the physical changes that took place in Slaven Bilic, once one of the coolest young managers in the game but who appeared to be collapsing before our eyes before he was finally released from his West Ham purgatory.

Before & After: Two years took their toll on Slaven Bilic

Likewise, Antonio Conte – looking like an Italian film star on his arrival, exuding confidence to the point of mania but latterly resembling someone recounting his traumatic survival of an earthquake – one year after winning the League on his first attempt.

Before & After: Antonio Conte

The Rangers is one of the least forgiving and most unreasonable clubs in football and Gerrard – neither an insider nor one whose England performances cut much ice in Scotland – will discover this when unrealistic expectations are not fulfilled.

Circumstantial evidence

But, more than this, are the circumstantial factors.

According to the media mania, his name alone will attract top-quality players and investment has been promised.

But let’s look at that rationally.

As recently as Friday, Dave King couldn’t even state if the necessary investment would be internal or external, claiming that it “didn’t matter”.

Now, far be it from me to call King a glib and shameless liar, but the empirical evidence is against this mystery investment existing.

A few weeks ago, The Rangers signed a third-rate kit deal that was derided by a large proportion of their own fans.

So, it seems safe to assume that the club hadn’t even thought of signing Gerrard at the time, as having such a big name manager on board – with exciting signings to come – would surely have been a bargaining chip in negotiations with Nike, Adidas or even New Balance.

Secondly, having promised a manager “capable of delivering trophies”, just in time to undermine Graeme Murty (and make this blogger’s concerns that The Rangers would run Celtic close in the Scottish Cup semi-final seem like frightful anxiety), King has appointed someone who can offer no evidence of the same.

Again, that sounds awfully like someone who had no idea that Gerrard would be boss, just a couple of weeks ago.

And yet, with a multi-million-pound war chest arriving any day now, The Rangers would surely have felt confident of luring a manager who had actually won something in the past – or at least managed a team – and who would back up Dave’s promise of Silverado.

We are also invited to believe that, on the cusp of a brave new era, two directors decided that they wanted to bail out before the times got truly exciting.

Add to this the debt, the issues with the takeover panel, the need for stadium repairs, etc. and the Steven Gerrard appointment looks more and more like a swindle perpetrated on someone who knows little or nothing about The Rangers or the Scottish game, aided and abetted by the most ignorant and unscrupulous shower of reporters that have ever covered any sport.

I’ve been wrong before, of course – like when I thought that we would face a few scares in the cup semi – but, at face value, this whole episode looks not so much a damp squib as a custard pie primed with a banger, ready to explode in a lot of faces.

Sympathy for the Red?

I suppose I could sympathise with Gerrard, who seems to have displayed that English-football arrogance of thinking that Scotland should be a soft-touch and a shortcut to the top.

I suppose I could predict that Brendan, Neil, Clarke, Robinson, Ross and even McInnes or Levein will take great pleasure in bringing the big-shot rookie down to earth, with a mixture of tactics, man-management and experience at the coal face, and that we should go easy on someone who has been pretty inoffensive, thus far.

I could but, on reflection – nah – f*ck him!

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