A long-forgotten Steven Gerrard quote resurfaced today from the annals of his views on Connor Goldson.
Pre-55, in pre-season, Gerrard said this:
Steven Gerrard quite simply didn’t deliver on this at all. Connor Goldson went on to play every single minute of every single match, showing that while the manager says what he says for reasons, nevertheless his comments cannot always be taken at face value.
This is no slight – no manager is fully honest with the truth, the ‘7-10 days’ fallacy is needed by managers for reasons they believe to be in the best interests of the club.
As we explained in late July, Ryan Jack would be lucky to reappear by early September – something we got a tonne of abuse for, with many calling us liars. Sadly, we were proven to be correct, and even Stevie G was economical with the facts over his stalwart midfielder.
This is the stuff that managers have to do, to optimistically project best case scenarios or outright falsify – knowing full well it probably isn’t going to happen.
And with Goldson, he’s untouchable – he’s missed barely a match in over a season, and while Stevie said there would be load management, it’s pretty clear he wasn’t really intending to follow through on that one in his case. Goldson plays when fit, absolutely 100%. The competition is to partner him.
And this shows why not everything our manager says can be trusted at face value, and you can trust Ibrox Noise to give a ‘translation’ of what our manager means. Sometimes. We’re not mind readers…
Couldn’t it be that he just changed his mind. We started last season very well defensively with clean sheet after clean sheet. While Goldson remained constant his partner changed frequently. Maybe Gerrard felt that Goldson gave him consistency of team selection and performance level that he just couldn’t trust fully with other players. Would Helander and Balogun have worked? Who knows but why take the risk. If it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it.
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