Jeers and cheers – an odd outing for Steven Gerrard

Ok, it was only a charity match and the booing was only pantomime, we think, but did Rangers supporters really have to boo our manager yesterday?

We loved him back in his playing gear gracing our stadium – Steven Gerrard is one of the greatest players of all time, and certainly one of the best of his generation. He had never before played a match of football on the Hallowed Turf in Govan, so seeing our manager strutting his stuff was a privilege for a huge turnout of fans.

And they booed him in the Liverpool shirt! We can’t help feeling he may have just felt slightly disappointed at this, given none of his Liverpool team mates got the same treatment.

Yes, it was ‘good natured’ but no matter the occasion, no matter how little rests on it, being booed even slightly in jest while giving your time for a good cause seems a bit off to us.

Jamie Carragher similarly gave his time to play at Man City for Vincent Kompany’s testimonial, all proceeds going to a homeless charity, and while Carra might not be Britain’s most popular man, did he really deserve to be booed either?

And Gerrard yesterday couldn’t have been over the moon at being jeered by the home fans. He laughed it off and said he ‘thought’ they’d booed him, and made no big deal of it, but it wasn’t something we felt was fair.

Of course, it was a gloriously different story when he turned out in the blue on 80 minutes, getting a huge ovation and roar thereafter, easily the biggest cheer of the day, so at least that adulation will hopefully have made up for it.

But could we maybe have canned the booing for this one!