Steven Gerrard couldn’t disguise his anger when he delivered his in-house verdict following the narrow 1-0 Europa League win against Alashkert.
Friday’s 5-0 Premier Sports Cup win over Dunfermline convinced the gullibles that everything was hunky dory again but last night the team were back to the standards shown against Dundee United and Malmo.
Star signing John Lundstram became the third Ibrox player to be red carded by one of those foreign refs in six months but the former Sheffield United man wasn’t missed.
Gerrard admitted that he couldn’t say on camera what he wanted to say but after condemning the first half performance he excused four players. James Tavernier, Filip Helander, Ianis Hagi, Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos weren’t on the list of good guys.
Gerrard must now transform the attitude of players that he has slaughtered for trips to Dingwall and Armenia before hosting Celtic in nine days time.
“I can’t really say what I want to say,” Gerrard replied to the bland first question over how he would look back on the Alashkert match.
“I thought some of the lads efforts, individuals was super-human. I think that our supporters will know who I’m talking about, your Steven Davis’, Calvin Bassey’s and Scott Wright when he came on. Connor Goldson, everything we ask for, I thought a lot of individuals, especially second half were super-human.
“In terms of our performance collectively it was so far away from where I wanted it to look in the first 45, it’s difficult for me to say. Difficult for me to comment on that.
“Second half the fans stayed with us, I thought their performance was superb. We showed fight, we showed desire. We wanted to play here in front of a superb crowd, we showed that for 45 minutes but the first half was so far away from how I want it to look and how I need it to look, its difficult to go into too much details.”
Gerrard constantly referred to the amazing performance of Scott Wright, describing him as super-human five times!
Disassociating himself entirely from the performance Gerrard added: “Moving forward it has to come from within the dressing room now. I’ve told them how I feel and how I see it, I’ve been as honest as I can with them. I think where we are right now we need it to come from within the dressing room.”