Chris Sutton has gone on the attack this week, and he is quite right to.
Firstly, he battered away Ally McCoist’s pitiful conspiracy theorising and then he went on the attack against Gerrard and his lamentable record.
Why does it take Sutton to do this?
The whole of the media can see, clearly, that Gerrard is floundering and all are fully aware that he had lost the dressing room last year. The reluctance to discuss this, far less to analyse the potential – and massive – implications of it point to just how ridiculous our media is, and just how bad they are at their jobs.
Celtic won the league comfortably last season, and this is true no matter how much those in Sevconia squeal about the circumstances.
Sutton is one of the very few journalists who is willing to explore those circumstances in full; he has already said that Gerrard would have suffered even greater misery and even humiliation if the campaign had continued.
Gerrard got lucky. He has been clinging to excuses ever since.
“He has proved nothing so far,” Sutton said. “He’s not won a trophy for two seasons and now the pressure is on him. If he fails, he will be remembered as the manager who came up short in the season when Celtic made history.”
This knowledge has fed into reports linking the ex-Liverpool player to other clubs. There is a lot of talk like that, much of it, one suspects, from Gerrard’s people who know full well that the best thing they can do to save his managerial reputation is get him out of Glasgow fast.
Sutton excoriated him in this interview, he really did.
“Gerrard has been backed in the transfer market. He has been allowed to bring in some big-name players on big wages and they just haven’t been able to go the distance and finish the season on a high … Winners are only confirmed when the trophies are handed out and on that score, Gerrard and Rangers have failed and that will be a tough reality for them to accept, especially after they beat Celtic at Parkhead back in December and believed they were ready to be champions again.”
Sutton likes to have his digs – hence his “winners are only confirmed when the trophies are handed out” line – but the points he makes are accurate. Sevco fans have not given Gerrard the scrutiny he deserves and the media has given him a free ride.
Only our former striker – and Michael Stewart – have called it like it is.
Gerrard has blamed the Grand Conspiracy of The Unseen Hand.
He’s blamed his own players.
He’s blamed the global health emergency for depriving his team of a chance they never had.
He has blamed bad luck on his failure to beat ten men at Hampden … other managers would have been sacked for that.
Soon enough there will be nobody left to blame.
Gerrard is the luckiest manager in football at the moment. It’s going to run out soon.
As Scottish football goes through the current crisis it is important to keep up with developments and the key issues. We are determined to do so, and to keep you informed as well. Please subscribe to the blog.