How Steven Gerrard's tenure may have left Rangers with big problems

There is an arresting revelation in Jordan Campbell’s excellent Athletic appraisal of Steven Gerrard’s now-ended tenure at Rangers. It may provide more than just a sense of where the Ibrox club and Scottish football could be headed in the wake of the 41-year-old’s departure for Aston Villa.

The unexpected development detailed by Campbell could build a case for concluding Gerrard’s three-and-a-half years in Glasgow - and the manner in which it has been brought to an abrupt halt - might do as much harm as good to the Rangers cause in the long run.

The former England and Liverpool captain made no secret about his exasperation over the absence of funds to strengthen his squad significantly subsequent to delivering Rangers from the top-flight title wilderness last season. He did so with a phenomenal championship success that will be forever remembered both for being achieved without his side losing a single league game and sparing the Ibrox faithful the unbearable prospect of Celtic bagging a record 10th straight league crown.

However, what wasn’t appreciated until now is that Rangers’ inability to lavish weighty transfer fees on any new arrivals appears owed to their suite of willing investors apparently no longer planning to convert future loans into equity. In the face of £35m losses over the past two years that were covered in such fashion, the investors are now said to want future loans repaid, with the possibility of interest payments also entering the equation.

Steven Gerrard won the Scottish Premiership title with Rangers last season. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

This places Rangers in an invidious situation. The comparatively deep pockets central to allowing Gerrard to take the Ibrox club to the top of the Scottish game appear as if they are being stitched up. Gerrard, in part, must be considered culpable. In classic Rangers fashion, the club have potentially over-reached in being consumed by clipping Celtic’s wings to stop the 10. Gerrard’s force of personality and desperation to make a splash in his first management post, coupled with the trophy-hoovering juggernaut across the city against which he was ranged, might account for that.

If Rangers didn’t have Gerrard as their manager since May 2018, they may not have wrested the title from Celtic when there was the most obsessive requirement to do so. Equally, though, the need to back such a mesmerising name in world football so heavily, way beyond the revenue generated from within, could hem them in going forward. This raises two key questions: ultimately what cost will require to be paid by Rangers for stopping the 10, and does the Gerrard-effect account for that tab?

The season before Gerrard pitched up, Celtic’s total wage bill dwarved Rangers by 300%. Now, there is only a 14% advantage held by the Parkhead men over their city rivals in that domain. However, while Celtic finance their operation through hefty players sales - in the past six months alone they have raked in £30m from such trading - Rangers haven’t brought in a sizeable fee from any transfer since Nikita Jelavic was sold to Everton for £5m in January 2012....weeks before the events were set in motion that led to Rangers’ liquidation and the requirement for them to start again in the fourth tier of the Scottish game.

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Now, Rangers need to regroup on the pitch under new management, but without what would appear to be the means to allow the next individual at the helm to “do a Gerrard” and lavish such fees as the £7m paid for Ryan Kent, or the £3m forked out on Conor Goldson. Arguably the case because of Gerrard’s biggest aberration across his Rangers tenure: the failure to land the £35m on offer for qualifying for the Champions League at the start of the season, mucked up at home to a 10-man Malmo.

How Gerrard is remembered by the Rangers support will be massively impacted by whether the Ibrox club can claim that bounty this season, the winners of the cinch Premiership more than likely to gain direct access to the Champions League group stages. In presently boasting a four-point lead in the league race, Rangers were most commentators’ favourites to retain their title. The hellish timing of Gerrard’s flit must put that back in the balance, though, especially with Celtic appearing impressively revitalised under Ange Postecoglou. Gerrard’s loss isn’t only likely to have a psychologically destabilising effect on a squad almost entirely fashioned by him. Not when Rangers’ entire backroom coaching and sports science team will be gutted, as well as potentially the medical department, as these staff follow him to Villa. As has been stated in many appraisals of the recent developments, Rangers’ erratic form has betrayed that the cycle for the club’s current squad appears nearing its conclusion. The all-consuming distraction of Gerrard leaving is hideously problematic, then, when they are already dealing with others such as Goldson running down his contract and Allan McGregor and Steven Davis facing down football’s father time.

Rangers Premier Sports semi-final against Hibs a week on Sunday, and the Europa League hosting of Sparta Prague four days later is hardly an opening double-header the new Rangers manager will relish. Gerrard took to Instagram today to issue an address stating that he hoped “in time” the club’s support would “understand” his decision to depart at such an awkward juncture. The club’s on-field preturns over the next six months will determine just how much understanding there is for that from a support who idolised him - for legitimate reasons. He may have only won one honour of the nine he contested in Scotland, but what an honour that proved to be. Short of winning the league the year before - to stop Celtic’s claiming a second nine-in-a-row in their history and setting up the platform to snare a quadruple treble - Gerrard could hardly have hit a sweeter spot than he did with the title last season, earned in masterful style with a 25-point winning margin. Moreover, to become the first manager of a Scottish club to navigate four qualifying rounds in continental competition, as he did to pave the way for the first of two successful Europa League campaigns, was genuinely transformative in restoring Rangers’ credibility beyond these borders. Never mind that these sorties coined-in around £25m to allow him to mature his team through retaining the integral squad members. The in-coming Rangers manager could prove envious of that fact. For the inheritance he has been bequeathed by Gerrard would seem to preclude such luxuries outlasting the Liverpool icon in Glasgow.

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