The Celtic boss will have no sleepless nights over the prospect of putting Gerrard’s head on his trophy wall.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what Brendan Rodgers does in his spare time. That doesn’t occupy my thoughts much, because I’m more concerned with what he does as an employee of Celtic—as the manager of this club.

But I strongly suspect that he’s not an aficionado of horror movies. I consider myself a genuine film buff and a little partial to the horror genre. Out of the many thousands of titles that make up that genre, only a handful are any good, and maybe a dozen or so rise to the level of genuine greatness.

So if the Celtic boss is having sleepless nights, it won’t be because he watches too many horror films. If he’s having sleepless nights, it’ll be over more mundane stuff—whether or not he can face working with Celtic’s directors for another year, perhaps, or whether his holiday hotel next year will be better than the one he stayed in last year.

I joke about this, but what I’m really saying is that there probably isn’t a lot that keeps Brendan Rodgers up at night. He has a family who love him. He has financial security for the rest of his life. He has a job he’s tremendous at and a club where he’s worshipped by fans, where he can stay for the rest of his career and never have to worry about becoming a hate figure. Ultimately, what is there to keep him awake?

Let me take something that won’t change his sleeping patterns one bit—the next Ibrox boss, whoever that will be.

He certainly won’t lose any sleep over the possibility of his next challenger being Steven Gerrard, which is the latest recurrent fantasy on the Ibrox fan sites today.

And not only would Rodgers not have sleepless nights over that, but he’d probably welcome it. He’d relish the opportunity to slap Gerrard back down, especially because of what happened last time. There’s a perception amongst a lot of the Ibrox fans that Rodgers up and left Celtic because he was worried about the challenge Gerrard would provide. But Gerrard was seen off that season… by Neil Lennon. So, I don’t think Rodgers has much to be afraid of.

Our boss would welcome the opportunity to put Gerrard’s head on his wall alongside all the other managerial scalps he’s taken at Ibrox.

I think he’d love it. Far from being concerned about it, it’s the kind of challenge he’d actually enjoy. And Gerrard himself? I don’t think there’s been a more overhyped individual in the recent history of the Scottish game.

Let me put this in perspective for you. Gerrard’s win rate at Ibrox was a mere 64.8% over 193 games. His stats are shocking—he drew 42 of them and lost 26.

The only season where he managed a sustained run of form was the COVID campaign, the one the Ibrox fans always talk about. They always refer to it, although they never consider the context.

They never consider Celtic’s collapse. They never consider that every single club in the country was slashing budgets just to survive—except for them and us. They never consider any of the special factors that made that season unique in history. You cannot judge a manager’s career on a title win in that campaign.

Yet not only is it the cornerstone of the Gerrard myth, but it’s also been turned into the cornerstone of the House of Cards myth—the idea that they had some big advantage at that point, which they’ve since blown in the eyes of history. None of it is true, and none of it helps them. It holds them back. It keeps them from seeing the truth, which is that they’re just not very good. And that one campaign was a gross anomaly.

Before that season, we had four trebles in a row. After it, there have been two doubles and a treble, and this year we’ll almost certainly win a second treble. So what part of this is difficult for them to process? What part of this doesn’t scream that the events of that year were a one-off? And that Gerrard’s record isn’t actually that special?

Rodgers’ record at our club? A win ratio of almost 70% in his first spell. That number would have been even higher, except the second season was a little hit and miss. His record in this spell at the club stands at a 72% win ratio. And our record this season is so good domestically that it leaves the opposition virtually no room for error.

And if you look at Gerrard’s time at Ibrox, there were a lot of errors.

To beat the Celtic juggernaut, any manager at Ibrox has to be virtually flawless. And that’s hard to do in the best of circumstances. But their club won’t be in the best of circumstances for the next couple of years.

Austerity over there is just getting started. They’re never going to build up to where they were under Beale, with the highest wage bill in the country, ever again. Their transfer budgets will be limited, to say the least.

Gerrard’s reputation has already been obliterated. He failed at Aston Villa and was sacked after only 11 months in the job.

His decision to go to Saudi Arabia robbed him of years in which he could have been working at an English Championship club, earning his stripes. That choice denied him opportunities to showcase himself, and the fact that it also ended in disaster has pretty much reduced his stock at home to near zero.

Gerrard—and those who flock around him with their sycophantic guff—now knows he’ll never be the manager of Liverpool. That talk of his inevitable return to the club he loves? Pure fantasy. Unless he goes back as an assistant or a youth coach, it’ll never be as the main man in the dugout. That failure and that knowledge will hang around his neck, making him doubt every forward step he takes.

Not only does Rodgers have no reason to fear Gerrard, but Gerrard will never work under the conditions Clement is dealing with now. And there is no prospect whatsoever of the Ibrox board trying to entice him by offering him more than Clement has now—because there simply is no more money in the bank to allow it.

So, Gerrard would have to return to an impoverished club, where the resources are even less than when he took over in the first place, where there’s no money to spend, and where Rodgers looms as a dark presence across the city.

The job just isn’t an enticing prospect for him, and he’s not an enticing prospect for the club. It’s hard to see what either party would get out of it.

Rodgers, on the other hand? I suspect he’d love it. I suspect he’d be rubbing his hands together. Clement or someone like him might have presented a challenge—unlikely, but possible. But he knows Gerrard won’t. He knows that because he almost saw off Gerrard before. People forget how close Gerrard was to being sacked while Rodgers was still in the dugout last time. And so Rodgers might feel there’s unfinished business there.

And I have no doubt that if given the chance, he’d finish the job.

Because one of them is an elite-level manager. And the other is a wide boy getting by on his name and reputation. And that reputation isn’t worth much anymore.

The Ibrox fans may dream about this.

But not half as much as some of us do.

It won’t be giving our supporters—or our manager—any nightmares.

Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images

The other night we put up our latest podcast. Recorded just after the Ibrox club went crashing out of the cup, we called it They’re Simply Depressed.