Chris Sutton has challenged Steven Gerrard to prove that he is a winner or face the consequences.
Lockdown couldn’t have arrived at a better time for the Ibrox boss as his side watched the gap to Celtic grown from two points to 13 after the January jaunt to Dubai.
After two summers of selling Season Tickets on the back of Gerrard’s name the quest to stop Celtic winning a 10th title has kept the gullible believing.
Sutton has been the only pundit to deliver some reality to Ibrox with Mark Warburton and Pedro Caixinha both called out for their failings.
Ahead of last season’s League Cup Final Sutton tagged James Tavernier a serial loser with an equally brutal assessment awaiting Gerrard.
Sutton told Team Talk:
The Rangers fans have a lot of faith in Steven Gerrard and want to believe he is the man who can take them back to the promised land and stop Celtic, but he has proved nothing so far.
He’s not won a trophy for two seasons and now the pressure is on him. Gerrard needs to stop coming up with the excuses and deliver and trophies are all that count when you are Rangers manager.
No team has ever won ten-in-a-row and Gerrard has to make sure it doesn’t happen. If he fails, he will be remembered as the manager who came up short in the season when Celtic made history.
Gerrard has been backed in the transfer market. He has been allowed to bring in some big-name players on big wages and they just haven’t been able to go the distance and finish the season on a high.
Celtic have some stalwarts in their team like captain Scott Brown and a few others who have been there a long time and know-how to win trophies, but Rangers are a team still striving to prove they can get to that position and until they win something, those question marks will remain.
They have fallen away badly in the final weeks of the last two seasons and even if they start well next time and keep pace with Celtic, it will always be in the back of the mind of Gerrard and Lennon that Rangers have a track record of failing when it matters most.
Winners are only confirmed when the trophies are handed out and, on that score, Gerrard and Rangers have failed and that will be a tough reality for them to accept, especially after they beat Celtic at Parkhead back in December and believed they were ready to be champions again
Gerrard signed an extended Ibrox contract last December, keeping him in Glasgow until 2023. Since the season ended Calvin Bassey and Jon McLaughlin have been added to the Ibrox squad.