Gutless Scottish Hacks Finally Question Gerrard’s Record … After He’s Gone.

The revisionism always comes when the empire totters and collapses, or otherwise comes to an end, doesn’t it? Because whilst it endures none dare question it. Whilst it reigns supreme, its enemies know to do nothing and say nothing which offends those in power.

Here in Scotland, the media never properly scrutinises an Ibrox reign until it passes into history and the next one is being ushered in.

The revisionism over Gerrard’s time in this fair land is already underway, with the most emphatic piece of it, at least so far, coming from Andrew Smith at The Scotsman, which echoes some of the stuff I’ve written so clearly than I can almost hear myself in his words.

The brazen cheek of it is beaten only be the tardiness of the realisations which were obvious to any person.

It was Gerrard himself who drove them to their present dire straits.

Just as Walter Smith did with Rangers, leaving his pal McCoist to pick up the pieces.

Who picks up the pieces here?

Before the media even gets into that, it has to start putting the Gerrard departure into another context, one where the Ibrox club should be glad to see the back of him.

I’ll have to cover Smith’s piece in more detail later. Because he’s not the only person in the media, which up until now has been nothing but slavish in their commentary on Gerrard, to suddenly decide that maybe the garden at Ibrox hasn’t been all that rosy after all.

All season long, I’ve been saying that their form was at least as shaky as ours.

Their defence hasn’t been great, and that’s if we’re being generous.

There are issues in their squad.

Gerrard’s success last season was freakish and built on something not quite right. Nobody wants to look into it, but I wonder if Smith’s use of the phrase “the cycle for the club’s current squad appears nearing its conclusion” isn’t a nod and a wink to the wise.

Because I’ve written about “the cycle”.

A lot of people thought I was mad, but I said that one of the ways you’d know – other than the formbook – is if Gerrard jumped at the first available job. Nobody is laughing anymore. I don’t expect any serious investigation either though.

There is nothing new in what’s about to happen. Every former Ibrox boss gets this, unless it was the media who hounded them out in the first place for heaping shame and humiliation on the operation. That was the fate of Warburton and Caixinha after all … but let’s not forget that the coverage these guys got in the early stages made the word “slavish” sound too tame.

That Gerrard leaves one almighty mess behind him is apparent to even the stupidest person, which is why I offer no congratulations to Smith or others in the media who have come to the jaw-droppingly obvious conclusion that this all might present the club there with a problem or two … but I do find the abrupt desire to examine his record as a manager somewhat amusing.

All of a sudden, one trophy in nine isn’t a great return for all that money he spent! Wow. Did they need to use actual brain cells to draw that conclusion? When Callum Davidson has bested you in terms of actual honours, that’s not a good look when you roll up for the job at Anfield.

Why has it taken until the day he sneaks out the back door like a poor man’s Brendan Rodgers for that to merit discussion and debate? The media’s dread of the Ibrox machine is equalled only by their obsequious hero worship of the man himself.

That “like a wedding reception waiting for the bride” piece from his first presser hasn’t improved with age.

Gerrard is the luckiest manager in the recent history of the game here.

He was done when the virus saved his job and the utter humiliation that was coming his way.

Whatever voodoo he was working behind the scenes last season was always going to be a one year thing and far from relishing the challenges in front of him in the remainder of this one he was dreading them, and worse; he was terrified of what the new year would bring.

All of this is being said across the press … but only now that he’s left the building and they have to find some way of making that alright. Gerrard’s departure on its own is no calamity, as his record proves, but the timing of it and that he’s taken his entire backroom team with him is a disaster of serious proportions and does plunge them into crisis.

But they weren’t in a good place before today, and Gerrard’s record was no worse yesterday than it is this evening when suddenly every hack in Scotland is interested in going over it with a fine toothed comb.

It’s easy to do now that they no longer have to face him at a presser, and how gutting it must be for those who actually paid for the privilege and for the moment have to make do with Jimmy Bell instead.