Sevco fans, in some quarters, aren’t very happy with the way their summer is going.
They see the club about to spend £3 million on a Brighton reserve and wonder why. They see the club about to sign a Liverpool loanee who couldn’t get game-time at Sunderland and wonder what the Hell is going on.
They are entitled to wonder “Is that what we were promised?”
And the answer, of course, is no.
Except it’s not quite as simple as that.
Because who actually did the promising here?
For starters, the club didn’t. Nobody at Ibrox ever explicitly promised a certain calibre of signing. It would have been madness. Everything was very vague and wishy-washy. Everything was presented in such a way as that no actual numbers were mentioned and no actual targets identified.
Gerrard himself has never publicly speculated on a budget.
So who did? Who’s been doing this?
Well the short answer is that the Sevco fans themselves have. But of course, that wouldn’t have been possible without the media doing its own bit. They have given this real impetus. They were the ones who started listing every over 30’s player in England and began dropping their names into the mix. A steady stream of them made their way into the papers, including Torres and Defoe. The Skrtel story, of course, got a lot of media attention.
The curious thing about that one is that Gerrard, himself, was under the impression that it would happen.
He seemed quite confident, but anyone could have told him that wages were going to be a huge stumbling block in that case. He and the fans were in on this one together, both thought it likely, both thought that it could be done.
But of course, it wasn’t delivered. Instead they have secured the signature of Goldson (or nearly anyway) and a young kid on loan. The other players the club has signed – who have been labelled “Gerrard signings” – were secured prior to his arrival and in no way reflect his policies or his long-term plans for the club … long term, that’s a laugh.
This isn’t going to last 12 months, and the signs are there already.
Gerrard is going to make a few additions, modest additions, but basically this untried, untested, and even unqualified manager is going to have to go head-to-head with Brendan Rodgers and a Celtic team which has won six trophies out of six in the past two years.
No, that wasn’t what they were promised at all.