Steven Gerrard has today confirmed Jake Hastie is ‘pushing’ for a squad place, and hinted that he has simply not quite delivered enough in training to convince his new manager that he’s good enough or ready enough even for a place on the bench yet.

Fans have been a little mystified as to where the summer signing from Motherwell has been, and why he’s been excluded from a number of squads this close season, but while happy with his squad at present, Gerrard dropped a big hint that Hastie hasn’t done enough yet to get in.

He said:

“Jake Hastie, who’s pushing to get into the squad.”

Of course, if Jake Hastie was impressing Stevie enough in training already he’d already have made it into the squad, so it does seem the 20-year old winger hasn’t quite pushed the manager into a selection dilemma over him.

In fairness we did question this signing deeply, and wondered what on earth Stevie had seen in his performance against us that we had not – but the man knows more about football than we do so we deferred and still do to his judgement.

And it seems, for now, the attacker hasn’t yet persuaded his manager that he’s ready for a jersey.