Gerrard is pathetic. Celtic fans would welcome this clown’s return to Ibrox.

What a pitiful, pitiful, pitiful person once coached the club across the city. Honestly, what have I said about Steven Gerrard in the past?

This is a guy who lives with an enormous amount of personal frustration and regret. A guy who lives – as Barry Ferguson does – with a shattered dream, an unrealised ambition. Ferguson got to live his out in a small way; that might end up being a worse fate. But like Gerrard, he grew up pretty much taking this dream for granted, only to find that they are limited individuals who couldn’t quite make it.

He dreamed of being manager of Liverpool. He believed he would be. He thought it was written in the stars. And by the way, this is not the sharpest tool in the box. So, I blame much of it on a media which allowed him to continue to believe that.

I blame much of it on the English media in particular, who fed this delusional rubbish for years. Gerrard never coached a single minute of football at the professional level until he went to Ibrox. But he went there with an almost universal presumption amongst the English media that he would one day return to Anfield as boss.

They don’t admit it much, but it’s true.

It was Ibrox that largely dissuaded them of that opinion.

Sure, he won a title – but he won that title in a season of exceptional circumstances. His time at Ibrox was almost entirely characterised by failure. The trick he pulled in that one season, when all of football was played in front of empty stadiums, was one he was never going to be able to repeat.

Any remaining doubt that he was a manager of only limited ability was crushed entirely during his spell at Aston Villa, which is why he went running to Saudi Arabia.

The mainstream media here has spent a long time promoting certain myths about Gerrard, and Gerrard has played into those myths at times. The one they’re pushing today is his supposed abiding love of Ibrox – which I happen to know for a fact doesn’t represent the full story.

The simple truth is that when he was last at Ibrox, he couldn’t wait to get out of the place. He jumped at the first job that became available south of the border.

There are two reasons for that.

The first is that he realised he had gotten lucky in that one campaign and wanted out before his reputation reverted back to what it was before – that of a guy hovering on the border of being fired. The second is that it was never really his bag in the first place.

See, although Gerrard won’t admit it, he comes from a background which isn’t exactly conducive to life at Ibrox. His family never moved here. They never wanted him to move here. They didn’t want any connection to the Ibrox club.

And all of this is known.

I’ll tell you what else is known. When it came time for the Scottish media to promote the cause of Michael Beale, what was it they said? It doesn’t take you long to remember. Gerrard was painted as the showy frontman and Beale the brains behind the operation. Now, I know a lot of them wish they could roll back on that stuff – but they can’t. It’s a fact. They said it, and a lot of them believed it.

So if Beale really was the brains of the operation, what does that make Gerrard?

I read this morning about his spiteful little anti-Celtic comments. It doesn’t surprise me in the least. This is his mentality summed up nicely. He defines himself as much by who hates him as anything else. And as for the rest? I don’t know what the Ibrox fans think that means. His claims of loving the club are hard to take seriously considering the haste with which he left it behind.

It’s not a coincidence that he’s suddenly found some affection for Ibrox again. He’s out of work, and he knows there’s a vacancy and a takeover going on. He comes across right now as a guy desperate to get back into management and who will literally take anything that comes along.

There’s a perception that he would jump at the chance to come back to Ibrox, but only under certain circumstances. If the takeover happens and these people are literally going to throw money at him – if he thinks he’ll get £20 million to spend on players – then maybe. Otherwise, this job will be far down his list of options.

I have to be honest: in some ways, I consider that a great pity. Because there are few delusions, held by our media and by the mob across town, that I would love to crush more than this one. The Steven Gerrard myth is about as stupid as any that’s ever been promoted in the Scottish press, and I would love dearly for us to tackle it and annihilate it. Because a myth is all it really is.

I’ve always found this love affair with him to be incredibly strange and incredibly hard to understand. A lot of people in the media, when they talk about him, still sound like gushing fanboys instead of professional sportswriters able to offer serious analysis.

Let me help them out. They’d dropped points in five league games prior to his departure. Four of those were at home. They had gone out of the Champions League against Malmö and were floundering badly in their Europa League group.

A lot of Ibrox fans were glad to see the back of him because they could see the writing on the wall. He just wasn’t that good.

In his first season as manager, he dropped points in 15 league games. Fifteen. He was lucky to survive that season. Aberdeen knocked them out of both domestic cup competitions. In three and a half seasons, that solitary league title – in the Covid campaign – is the only trophy he won.

Do I have the slightest doubt that Rodgers will clean this guy’s clock? No. None whatsoever. So, bring it on. Literally, bring it on. The only thing better than seeing Barry Ferguson getting the gig would be seeing this guy get it. The guy who still flounders in his own self-doubt over the shattering of his career ambition, which now he realises will never come to pass.

Bring on the manager the media wants us to forget they once described as the frontman for Michael Beale. Bring on the guy who, without money to spend, spent his whole time there griping and moaning about being outgunned – in a way that would made even Philippe Clement seem like a model stoic.

I would love to see him get it and I know most Celtic fans would love to see him get it. Because there’s nothing better than bursting an Ibrox bubble – than shattering an Ibrox illusion into a million pieces.

And this one just won’t die because he left before being sacked. He got out while he could, before the axe fell. And because he’s the one Ibrox boss in recent times who avoided that fate, people have mistaken him for a talent.

He never was. He never will be.