Last night, in the aftermath of the Celtic game – I’ll be doing a full piece on that later on, believe me – I was reading the newspaper for tomorrow and I came across an interview with Gerrard which had my jaw nearly on the floor.
And I realised that the media is already letting him live in his own version of reality, just like it does with Dave King.
He was talking about the need to have competition at Ibrox.
For the second time in as many weeks, he took a “what did they know?” attitude to the job done by his predecessors, something that is atrociously disrespectful and unbecoming of any boss. He talked about how some players found it “easy” to get into the Ibrox team … and vowed to change that.
And I laughed, I really did. Here is the guy who has signed two loan players from Liverpool and who is contractually obliged to give them a certain number of games or pay a fine, and he’s sitting in front of the media and talking bollocks about how players at his club will only be selected on merit. Which is why Ryan Kent is almost certainly going to start tonight’s game when he’s been inside Ibrox five minutes and they have no idea what he can and can’t do.
You could not make this up, it is hilarious. The hacks had an open goal to shoot at here, but gave the former Liverpool youth coach a free pass. No Celtic manager would ever have gotten away with that; the press would have been all over him.
Gerrard has talked a good game, or at least the media thinks he has. In fact, he has already run through every cliché and given every textbook answer. God help him if he has to conjure up an original thought.
He is in so far over his head he doesn’t even see it.
Last night, I watched Brendan Rodgers turn a high-pressure football match on its head with a single tactical change … Gerrard isn’t in school anymore, copying someone else’s test paper. The real stuff is about to start and if he’s coming out with pish like this to rally his team then he is already nowhere, nowhere at all.