Steven Gerrard’s made an impressive confession

Steven Gerrard has made a telling confession with honesty, humility and candour by suggesting that if he is going to enjoy the praise of being top of the league, beating Celtic and great European results, he must also embrace the criticism losses like the cup, results like yesterday’s and losing to Celtic will attract.

Regulars know we’re not convinced overall yet by Gerrard, albeit we’ve seen a smidge more positivity this campaign, but we do admire some of his soundbites of willing to take responsibility for things which go wrong, even if his most loyal backers among the fanbase admonish him of that.

He said:

“I’ve put this squad together and I’ve picked the team and tactics, so I’ll take full responsibility for it. I’ve sat here on a lot of occasions and took a bit of praise and accept that, so I’ll sit here and take responsibility for it. Those players go out there to represent the players and myself first and foremost but anyone connected with Rangers can’t be going away with any positives. It’s a big problem and challenge for me now. If a result and performance puts the spotlight on me, that’s fine. I’ll take it on the chin, I’m man enough to accept that.”

If we remember Mark Warburton, he refused to ever hold his hands up for a single thing that went wrong. Even his exit was the club’s fault, and he never spoke to Forest, no. Pedro took a long time to admit any culpability but he did eventually, whereas Gerrard, a rookie manager is holding his hands up and saying what should be said. It is his squad, his ideas, his construction, his formation – and when it works he rightly gains good press and plaudits.

When it doesn’t, he is mature enough to accept responsibility – too many managers don’t, and the telling fact is he admits that if the work is his, then the problems as well as the benefits are too.

It’s not like we want to be sitting here praising a manager for admitting he’s made mistakes, we’d rather the mistakes didn’t happen.

But it’s frankly an absurd waste of everyone’s time if those who work for our club cannot accept when they get things wrong.

You won’t improve if you don’t accept you made a mistake in the first place.