Has a true star been born at Ibrox?
I know Glenn Middleton is only an 18-year-old winger, but Gerrard has to reward young Glenn by showing him the respect his play when given first team minutes has deserved – surely he must start this Thursday night’s Europa League match at Ibrox.
He has shown better form than Kent who is a loan signing from Liverpool, and Middleton was easily the man of the match against Wigan from start to finish. His pace, work rate and ability to win the ball back again was brilliant throughout the friendly.
What a stand out player he is becoming and he really does excite the fans and gets them on their feet. He is showing a good end product and is producing something we’ve not had in our side for a number of years.
Glenn has genuine pace, and the best young newcomer at Ibrox since Willie Henderson replaced Scotland and Rangers ever present Alex Scott. Rangers ended up selling Scott down south and got good money for him, once the ‘Gers realised that Henderson was just too good to drop!
The fans are raving about him on the various websites for his direct running, and the quality of his very effective defensive work, and with the ease of the way he can take on his defenders.
Did Gerrard say last week that age is not the most important thing, because if a young player has the ability to play in his first team – then he will play him. Let’s hope Stevie G sticks to his principles and has the balls to see it through.
If he starts with Glenn Middleton in the left midfield position and he doesn’t perform to near his best, he can always be replaced by either Kent or Murphy on his left hand side position.
Another very important reason for starting Glenn on Thursday is the fact that Gerrard continues to ask his players to make decisions extremely hard for him and his brilliant backroom staff to make.
He wants all his players to prove to them all that their performances on the park makes it almost impossible to keep a great performing player out of the team.
If you are a man of your word, how could you not start with this outstanding young player who is currently full of confidence and will be devastated if not chosen after that display which had everything except he didn’t score a goal. It was a virtuoso performance at Ibrox.
I love watching Middleton play with his great energy, enthusiasm, desire, a massive amount of ability and also the bottle to handle it all! It was Middleton’s well taken corner that found Katic’s head for him to score his second goal for Rangers to make the game more comfortable at 2-0 as he headed home and put us on easy street.
Over to you Stevie G and your amazing background staff, to decide what to do on this occasion.
Readers, would you keep this lad in the first team?