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Gerrard’s Judgement Is So “Trusted” At Anfield That Wilson Is Signing For Lampard.

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Remember all those stories last week about how Sevco had come to a superb “arrangement” with Liverpool to have first refusal on the best of their youth players? Yes, those were some interesting tales. As I said at the time, the devil was in the details.

What Liverpool were actually proposing was that any players they were interested in sending to Scotland would be offered to Sevco first, and that’s not quite the same thing. Their best players won’t be allowed near Ibrox.

Those who will be thrown their way are, quite simply, the ones who nobody south of the border would want.

All those stories revolved around two pieces of fiction which the media has seemed to accept as fact; the first is that Liverpool want Gerrard back as a future Anfield boss one day. The second is that they already trust his judgement and skills enough that they want to bend over backwards to make his procession home as easy as possible.

And this is nonsense of course, all of it. Liverpool will pick their managers the way they always have, based on a man’s achievements. They would rather see what he can do without their help. They would rather he fought every step of the way, all the better to see exactly what he’s made of.

And there’s already evidence to suggest they don’t think that’s much.

For openers, if he was some kind of guru in the making why didn’t Liverpool fight to hang onto him? Why wasn’t he offered a senior place on Jurgen Klopp’s staff. Rumours persist that he wasn’t going to get a new deal as an Anfield youth coach and that he was being offered a gig as some kind of “global ambassador” instead – a grinning, hand-shaking, talking wax dummy whose responsibilities were to do meet and greets and public relations.

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that job. We have a number of people at Celtic Park, club legends, greats of the game, who do exactly that. Not every former player is cut out for a career in management, no matter what they might think.

Today we saw just how much they rate Gerrard; the young winger Harry Wilson – who according to the press was never going to Celtic for various reasons, but the truth of which I’ll cover later – is going to Derby instead. That’s Liverpool’s decision, he was never offered to the Ibrox club because Liverpool had no interest in the prospect at all.

I can tell you right now that there were two reasons why Wilson didn’t go to Celtic, and none of them had anything to do with Sevco having “first refusal” on him. I will cover them in a piece later on today, but ignore everything that’s been in the media.

Sevco’s manager is so rated that Wilson has been sent to earn his stripes under Lampard instead; this is a double insult, of course, and it ought to be seen in that light. They have sent their player to learn in a second tier, under a club rival, rather than send him north for what the media is telling us will be a title contest, and a European campaign, under a best loved son.

If Gerrard was Celtic manager, how do you think that would be spun?

In truth, there is no spinning it, which is why the media would rather ignore all the implications of it.

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