Steven Gerrard makes veiled dig at midfielder after disappointment

Steven Gerrard last night made a veiled dig at outgone Ovie Ejaria’s commitment issues after the Liverpool midfielder returned to Anfield.

The former Sunderland playmaker has had quite the cloud over him ever since a number of key incidents and ‘attitudes’ surfaced over the past week, and his exit, while ‘disagreed’ with by Gerrard, nevertheless was strangely endorsed too.

Rangers’ boss said:

“I’m never going to stand in a player’s way who is not happy and who is not settled because I have people who are desperate to wear the shirt and who would run through brick walls to wear it.”

It’s evident Ejaria wasn’t one of these, but the more Gerrard discusses his commitment issues and the more we analyse Ejaria’s evident lack of it in our shirt, the more odd his selection of the youngster looks.

Here we had a player who couldn’t care less about Rangers and didn’t want to be here from the start, playing most matches and failing to deliver on his alleged promise.

And for Gerrard to castigate him for what we could all clearly see week in week out while still continuing to select him is certainly strange.

As an aside, we’ve seen accusations levied at some ‘fans’ who allegedly racially abused Ejaria on social media. We have zero evidence this occurred, other than hearsay, but if there is any truth in it we naturally condemn it to the highest levels and disassociate those perpetrators from the club, which endeavours to be inclusive regardless of creed or ethnicity. That said, Rangers have many black players, such as outgone Umar Sadiq, Lassana Coulibaly, James Tavernier and Connor Goldson, not to mention some South American guy up front… so if one of these players was attacked on the colour of their skin, idiocy and ignorance doesn’t even cover that.

Back to the player himself though, it’s a sorry tale, and we’re pretty fed up of talking about the boy now – he’s in the past and we’d like him to stay there.