As the Ibrox club begins to disintegrate, I am ever amazed at those amongst their fan-base who obsess over Gerrard and the general “improvement” under him.
It’s remarkable for a number of reasons, not least of which is that except for their European form – which I’ll get to shortly – much of what they believe in is demonstrable nonsense.
An article over on one of their sites sums up this delusional claptrap.
Let me go through the things it alleges about Gerrard one element at a time.
You can tell me what you think, but to me they are howling at the moon.
In my view, Gerrard’s tenure will go down in history as one of the gravest mistakes in the history of Scottish football.
Primarily because it’s been so expensive.
And it might be even more expensive to end it, considering they gave him a two year contract extension, with a major raise, in October last year.
Let’s have a look at the nonsense their article alleges … it is lunacy.
Gerrard Has Brought Stability To The Club … But Has He?
One of the arguments the article in question makes is that Gerrard has brought a “clarity” and purpose to the side, and a stability which they have lacked.
But is any of that true?
Gerrard’s “clarity” has been to tell mediocre players that they should win every week just because the club thinks it’s the OldCo and the OldCo was expected to do just that. Doubtless, this stupid idea has been implanted in his head by others within the club, but he has swallowed it and passed it on to the players.
They are not coping well with that pressure.
Gerrard’s “purpose” is to win the league title. He has failed two years out of two.
The “stability” argument is based on his achievement of securing them second spot.
There are two reasons why that is stupid.
The first is that Derek McInnes summed up the thinking at a lot of the clubs when he virtually conceded second to them before a ball was even kicked this season. The reason he did so is the second part of my argument; under Gerrard, Sevco has spent upwards of £20 million and signed the equivalent of two full teams a little over 18 months.
Second spot is the least he should achieve with that kind of budget.
Quite how anyone can argue that this constant chopping and changing of the squad has brought anything remotely like “stability” is beyond me.
Celtic has a rebuilding job to do in the summer, and we did exactly that.
But I hope that we’re getting back to a strategy of signing one blue chip player per campaign with little tweaks, rather than a wholescale rebuilding.
One of the reasons we’re successful is that we do have that stability running right through the heart of the team.
At Ibrox there is no such thing.
Finally, there are widespread stories of major dissent in the ranks.
Something evidently happened over in Dubai; is this the mark of a stable club?
Gerrard’s “Name” Has Raised Their Profile Especially With Transfer Targets.
This is a particular favourite of mine; Gerrard has given them a chance to sign a better class of player.
But where exactly are these superstars which he has granted them access to?
Where are the blue chip footballers who would not have come to Ibrox without him?
Gerrard has brought in a handful of Liverpool reserves, none of whom have done the slightest good in making them a better team.
He has signed assorted SPL level dreck, like Jones, Hastie, Kamara and Kamberi.
He has spent big money on the very defensive players he is now lashing on a weekly basis, such as Goldson and Katic.
Would Edmundson have stayed in England’s third tier if anyone but Gerrard had been manager?
Of course he wouldn’t.
This bizarre belief appears to be based on just a handful of players; Defoe, Barasic, Hagi, Aribo and Kent.
Really, though, let’s look at it, starting with the English veteran striker.
No club down south was going to guarantee him first team football with the regularity he was being offered it at Ibrox. Celtic could have made a move for him; indeed, many urged us to, but we realised that he was an expensive piece of bling and we had better options.
Defoe didn’t have a better offer than Ibrox on the table; I think Gerrard had very little to do with it.
Hagi had flopped in Belgian football. Aside from a couple of moments against Braga and a goal on his league debut, I see nothing to suggest that this is a superstar in the making. Gerrard’s name did not land them the player; he would have gone anywhere they offered him games.
The same applies to Barasic who has been reinvented by their fans as some sort of superstar; bear in mind they wanted shot of him not that long ago. He went to Ibrox for the same reasons as Aribo; he went there for the money.
Now Ryan Kent, on the other hand, might well have moved to Ibrox because Gerrard was there.
But is that really something worth boasting about? He has cost them a monumental transfer fee which he has shown not the slightest sign of living up to.
Someone at Anfield is still laughing about that, I assure you.
So who else has Gerrard enticed to Ibrox that no-one else could have?
The best and most consistent players in his squad were here before he arrived, save for Arfield. You could argue that he moved to Scotland to play for Gerrard, but again I’d suggest the alleged size of the club and the hefty wage packet would have swayed him anyway, regardless of who was in the dugout.
Their Alleged Improvements On The Domestic Front.
This one is unarguable, some folk are going to say. Look at their points totals since he came in.
Well, you know what? I did exactly that, and they are … impressive, as far as that goes.
But it doesn’t go very far. Let’s take a better look, behind the stats.
Towards the end of last season, between losing at Celtic Park and falling to Kilmarnock on the final day of the league campaign, they went on their best run of the campaign, winning six league games in succession.
Of course, by then we were already over the hills and far away, having wrapped up the league in good time.
That was, and it remains, their best run of games under Gerrard in the SPL.
This season, they have failed to win more than five league matches in sequence; Celtic has just won its eighth in a row. The last defeat was at Celtic Park, of course, against Gerrard’s team … before that we had won eleven matches on the bounce. That’s how titles are won.
In more than 18 months at the club that six game run, when it no longer mattered, is the best they’ve put together.
Their performance in the cups hasn’t been bad … but it’s no better than that which Aberdeen managed a few years back, and last season it was Hearts who got to Hampden twice.
Maybe they’ll meet us this year at Hampden too.
The Myth Of Their “Brilliant European Form.”
In Gerrard’s first European campaign, they played 14 games; eight in the qualifiers and six in the Groups. Gerrard’s team won five of them. A win ratio of just over 30%.
The standard of teams they faced in the qualifiers was the textbook definition of piss-poor, yet they won four out of eight.
The Group Stage was a near disaster. They lost twice, drew three and won one.
This was in spite of their Europa League group rivals lurching from crisis to crisis, and there’s been a little bit of that in this campaign too.
If possible, the standard of opposition in this qualifying campaign was a worse than in the last one; the Legia side who are a shadow of the one we faced under Ronny were their best opponents.
In The Groups, they’ve apparently had a better time of it.
Yet one of the best teams in their group was supposedly Feynoord.
They sacked their manager during the campaign and it came as no surprise. They finished bottom. Young Boys played Sevco to the last whistle of the last group game; had they lost (and they came close) the Ibrox club would have gone out having won two games out of six.
Now, some of their results have been more impressive; they drew in Portugal and beat Porto at Ibrox.
That’s decent against a good side. But Braga, apparently a lower ranking team from that country, were dismantling them before they slipped, spectacularly, and allowed Gerrard’s team back into the game and the tie. We’ll see what tomorrow night delivers.
His record in his first campaign in Europe was five wins in fourteen; it’s better this time around.
He has nine wins (mostly against low-order dreck) out of fifteen. That fourteen wins in total, in Europe, over two campaigns. Out of 29 matches so far. It’s a win ratio of just less than 50% … and let’s look at who those wins have been secured against.
They have beaten (once) Progres of Luxembourg, Maribor of Slovenia, Osijek of Croatia, Shkupi of Macedonia, UFA of Russia, Rapid Vienna, Legia Warsaw, Porto, Braga and Feynoord. They have (twice) beaten St Joseph of Gibraltar and Midtijland of Denmark.
There are no massive scalps in there, no members of the European elite. They have faced, for the most part, mid-ranking teams and made themselves difficult to beat. In the same timeframe they’ve drawn a dozen times … almost as many games as they’ve won. What their fans will point to is that they’ve only lost three games … that’s the most impressive stat.
But has the “European football miracle” happened? The best side they faced last season prior to the groups was Maribor. They drew four out of eight in the qualifying campaign; a halfway decent side would have ended them.
In this qualifying campaign the best side they faced – a comparative term only – was Legia Warsaw, who won three out of eight in their own qualifying campaign, including games against sides from Gibraltar, Finland and Greece and finally Scotland.
Gerrard’s European exploits have been impressive for a support that didn’t expect much. But we’d be furious with a Celtic manager whose side had drawn 12 times and lost three out of 29 games against the level of opposition they’ve faced.
It’s better than they expected … but not as brilliant as they try to make it sound.
Gerrard Has “Rebuilt Their Squad” And Made It Better.
This is a good one. But has he really?
There is little doubt that he has rebuilt the squad; that’s just a fact.
The turnover of players at Ibrox in the last two years have been extraordinary. Yet it remains the case that the three biggest assets the club has (Morelos, Ryan and Tavernier) were there before he arrived and that two others (McGregor and Davis) are old Ibrox players who returned for a final payday.
His team is certainly doing better than the sides built by Warburton and Caixinha did.
They are very good at grinding out results. But I would dispute that his side is all that much better in terms of its personnel. He has set them up well and they play a rough high-pressing game which can work well for them, and is the reason for their European record.
He’s filled the squad with some amount of useless garbage and they have a mammoth central midfield presence whilst other areas have suffered.
There is no balance.
The likes of Flanagan, Edminston, Ojo, Hastie, Jones, Halliday and a host of others offer them nothing positive.
They are weak at both left and right back.
They are threadbare in the wide areas.
Their forward line is built around one footballer who can’t be trusted and another who should already have retired.
They arguably have a strong starting eleven; that much is clear.
But is that a title winning squad? But for a small number of players, I don’t see them as that much better than most of the other sides in the league.
Any time they’ve had more than one player injured panic sets in over there.
The loss of certain individuals definitely puts them at peril of dropping points.
Gerrard has spent a fortune; are they really getting value for money?
This Story Doesn’t Have A Happy Ending For Them …
It is difficult to deny that Gerrard still has a huge following amongst the Sevco support … but how long can that last if Celtic wins another treble and we finish further ahead of him than we did in the last campaign?
A lot of their supporters have pinned their hopes on the Scottish Cup; that is not a great return for such a vast allocation of resources.
If it were not for their two European runs – which have largely paid for that spending spree – it’s tempting to suggest he’d already be under huge pressure.
A Sevco fan forum has a poll running right now on whether he should go right now; with a little over 600 respondents a mere 5% believes that he should. 29.5% think his jacket is “on a shaky peg.” This is telling. A failure to win that cup will skyrocket both numbers.
His popularity amongst the bulk of the support is still high, but as the European runs have saved him so too has his famous name.
Anyone who’s name wasn’t Steven Gerrard – and who didn’t have the security of a deal lasting four more years – would probably be facing an ultimatum from the boardroom by now.
Gerrard has escaped that thus far … but even amongst those who say he needs more time there is a growing disquiet. This article has not asked any questions that aren’t being asked amongst their fans … and they, more than anyone, will shine the spotlight on him when this campaign is done.
The question that haunts many of them is this; if they fire him, what do they do next?
Is there anyone out there capable of stopping the ten? As James has pointed out, it’s the wrong question. Celtic are so consistent that it would take us to drop our own standards quite significantly before we’d be under serious threat. Few really expect that to happen.
A lot of Sevco fans cling to the hope that Gerrard will “do the honourable thing” if he doesn’t look like succeeding; that’s very convenient and would save them a few quid.
What’s more likely is that he would dig in his heels, negotiate a huge compensation package and then do a tour of the English press rooms telling everyone that he was under-resourced and that Celtic were just too good.
Much of the media down there would lap that message up and his career might not take a fatal hit; he will never be manager at Liverpool either way.
Having looked at this guy since his arrival in Scotland, I reckon it’s a matter of time before he’s gone. The only way he walks is if a decent sized offer comes in from down south, and even then I wonder if his ego would keep him at Ibrox until it was too late ….
For the club as well as himself.
The Rumour Guy is a Celtic fan and blogger from Glasgow … this is his first non-rumour article.