Today’s painful draw at McDiarmid Park, for us, was a bit of a epiphany.

Rangers did not play badly overall it has to be said, even if the surface was horrific, and we’ve lost with worst performances than that.

But there was something glaring missing – sparkle. Sparkle missing since December 29th. And this led us to ask a controversial question:

Has Steven Gerrard taken this Rangers as far as he can?

Let’s not deny he’s improved the team – since the days of Warby, Murty and Pedry (couldn’t resist) this club has now beaten Celtic legitimately and hit impressive heights in Europe.

But for the past two months, in every post-winter fixture, the energy and sparkle which preceded the break is gone. It’s just gone.

It’s not that we subscribe to dressing room fallout theories, or conspiracy stuff about Alfredo Morelos – we just begin to wonder, as the team continues to fall backwards from that December zenith, whether our manager has done as much as he can with this club.

Celtic’s relentless return since January has invigorated their side, while ours stutters badly. We achieved miracles late last year but have been unable to sustain them.

We didn’t even need to improve further, just maintain the level we’d got to, give or take.

But unfortunately we’re miles off that now, and we cannot shake the feeling that the manager and squad are getting stale.

This is not us calling for Stevie’s head – we’re not asking him to resign or be fired. Nothing like that.

We’re just postulating that for further growth, we struggle to see how the current management and squad can achieve it.

We knew St Johnstone would be a challenge, and yes, our defence was absolutely shocking (more on that later), but Rangers should still be able to beat them. And usually do.

No, we’re just fearing that the current regime has done as much as it can, and better people than us can figure out how to improve us further.

Any ideas?