Columnist Bill Leckie has warned Steven Gerrard that he may need to change his stance towards his Rangers players as he feels the manager is “not getting through” to them currently.
The Ibrox club have endured a difficult start to 2020, with two defeats and two draws from their last seven league games seeing them fall 12 points behind leaders Celtic in the Premiership title race, and Gerrard was seething after Sunday’s draw at St Johnstone. The manager took aim at the defenders who featured at McDiarmid Park by saying that he needs the injured Filip Helander back “sharpish” (as per Sky Sports).
In his column for The Scottish Sun, Leckie feels that Gerrard is struggling to get through to his players, writing: “You just have to wonder how many times he can force himself to spit the same words out before it feels like one time too many. Because the way things are going, either he needs to empty half of this stuttering side. Or he has to do walking away. I just can’t see any middle ground. He’s caned them so often after performances like this one without getting the desired response.”
He added: “They’ve lost to Hearts, a team who could barely beat a carpet most weeks. They’ve lost at Killie after being a goal up with 13 minutes left. They’ve drawn a blank at home to Aberdeen and now they’ve thrown away a lead to surrender two points at Perth. Every time, Ibrox boss Gerrard has reacted with a little more anger, a little more frustration — but a little less surprise. And every time, it becomes clearer that whatever he and his coaching staff are saying to the players, it’s not getting through.”
The frequency with which Rangers have dropped points in recent weeks seems to lend weight to Leckie’s claim that Gerrard’s words are not having the desired effect on his players. The manager’s post-match condemnation of his defenders after the St Johnstone game was far from his first time criticising the team in public. After they conceded twice in the final quarter-hour to lose at Kilmarnock, he said that his team “never handled the heat” at Rugby Park (as per Sky Sports), while he lamented that he “didn’t recognise us” in the defeat to bottom club Hearts a month ago (as per Daily Record).
On one level, the manager should not have to try and legislate for the type of errors that Nikola Katic made for both of St Johnstone’s goals on Sunday. However, if he is hoping that calling out his players publicly for poor performances and results would spark a response, it has not materialised in recent weeks and Gerrard’s candid approach doesn’t seem to be working going by their recent results. It has also led to criticism from some Rangers fans over his habit of throwing players under the proverbial bus.
As Leckie has suggested, perhaps the manager’s scathing assessments of his players aren’t resonating with them and he might be better served stripping back the severity and frequency of public criticism of their performances if it would help dressing room morale and spark an upturn in form.
Rangers fans, what did you make of Leckie’s remarks on Gerrard? Share your views in the comments section below!
