For three seasons Steven Gerrard was exalted by Rangers fans for a number of reasons, but a huge one was his side’s staggering performances in Europe.

With a budget a fraction of the likes of Porto, Benfica, Feyenoord and Braga, Rangers matched or bested many major scalps and made last 16 of the Europa League a yearly achievement.

The coefficient absolutely loves Rangers, and Gerrard’s exploits only hiked Scottish rankings in that particular scale, but there definitely was a roof to him.

And after two fails under Gerrard at the last 16, Rangers fans concluded we’d basically hit our limit.

First the loss to Leverkusen, then to Praha the following year.

We on Ibrox Noise were hugely critical of Gerrard’s feeble tactics v the Germans, who were easily there for the taking, while we attributed a lot more quality to Praha than they deserved after they comfortably put us away.

We also did this with Malmo, who crushed us with ease, making us deduce it was just a step too high at that point.

We had no idea it was purely down to tactics, ambition and courage.

Praha were nothing special, they’re 55th in Europe (Celtic 36th, Rangers thanks to the Journey are still down in 71st on the 10-year ranking) but we made them look way better than they are, and we’d done the same to Leverkusen.

We also made a complete pig’s ear of Malmo, who turned out to be one of the all-time worst CL teams – thanks to appalling tactics and naivety from an inexperienced management team, we were comfortably dumped out a competition we should have easily qualified for. At the time we credited the step up as being just a bit beyond us, but that was plain wrong.

With a different manager we’ve already slapped Praha’s equal city rivals around, got a comfortable draw in France to mighty Lyon with nothing riding on it, but then bashed Borussia with ease, before doing the same to Red Star, albeit at the halfway stage.

The difference? Fear.

Rangers in Europe under Gio have a manager who knows exactly how to coach a side at this level, who has the Dutch grounding of football underneath him and how to play the beautiful game, Total Football.

This means we play without the fear we did under Gerrard at this more elite level.

We show our opponent respect, as we should, but we don’t fear them, and that’s the difference between bending over for Leverkusen, as we did back then, and annihilating Dortmund this time around.

We always had the team to do it, in fairness to Stevie he built a good squad, but now we have a manager who gives us a European Rangers to truly believe in based on tactics and a system.

True, we’re still ‘merely’ at the last 16, just like under Gerrard – but having a 3-0 lead to take to Serbia this week does give us a strong foothold and chance to make it, something we’ve never had before and certainly not since the run to Manchester.

What a European team we have under Gio. He’s still yet to lose a match over 90 at this level. Deeply impressive.