Steven Gerrard has come to captain James Tavernier’s defence in a rather baffling manner by claiming that despite his captain’s absence from social media and club media duties following bad results, that in fact this is incorrect and the ex-Wigan man is always first to put himself out there.

Speaking prior to the visit of Hamilton tomorrow, the manager was at pains to highlight his captain’s positives despite the errors he made on Thursday, and strangely contradicted apparently known tropes of Tavernier’s behaviour.

He said:

“James is someone who will put himself before the team. He will put himself up there to be shot down, he takes responsibility. James isn’t someone who would shy away from that in the dressing room, so there are no problems.”

Overlooking the possible freudian slip about Tavernier being selfish, as we touched on yesterday, Tav is next-to-never in the firing line after bad results, appears to take very little responsibility on the pitch as captain and certainly has a swathe of critics among the support for his merits with the armband.

But his manager disagrees with this, and has the assertion his captain is very much a chest-puffed stormtrooper who leads and rallies his men.

We find this a little odd, and Gerrard further confirmed Tavernier will continue as normal against Hamilton.

For the manager, there is no question of Tav being rested or relieved of the captaincy, and the ex-Newcastle man will plug away as before.

Before anyone claims this is ‘another Tav hate piece’ – we agree with Stevie about the fullback’s attacking qualities – by and large they’ve been excellent this season. But he’s supposed to be both our leader, and a defender, and isn’t doing these two particularly well.

No matter how much his boss suggests otherwise.