There is no legitimate case for sacking Steven Gerrard

do you think Gerrard is getting the right level of support from the likes of McAllister? I really think things will improve next season but have nothing to base that on. i guess it just has to.

An argument for another thread but I don't think having a failed manager with no experience of the club or country is a particularly good idea.

Any conversation about Souness should acknowledge that he had Smith as his number two. When Souness left for Liverpool Smith took over and the rest is history. Anyone fancy the chances of being managed by McAllister at all?
 
Squandered a lot of points but definitely being hindered by match officials. Next season will be time to judge.

The amount of squandered points is criminal and meant that we have rarely put the scum under any pressure.

As for the match officials I can only see that getting worse if we get closer to them and NIAR pressure ramps up, we should pubically calling them out every time but apart from.a couple of times we have failed to do it.
 
He's already earned the club 14m this season in unexpected European Revenue and he's taken Morelos' game to another level to the point were we could be talking about a 15/20m pound asset. Do you honestly think the board are regretting hiring him?

Morelos was the same player last season, one week unplayable the next missing a barrowload, that is a ridiculous claim to make.
 
The usual agitators appear as if by magic. Don't like the board, don't like the manager.

Q - 'Which manager do you suggest? '
A - 'Don't know but I don't like this one'
...or the last one.....or the one before that....or his predecessor.

Q - 'Who do you use as an example of a great appointment'?
A - PLG....what vision from the board'
Q - 'Yes but he failed'
A - 'Yes he was total clown'

and round and round it goes
 
I expected us to beat shite SPL sides far more consistently. I expected a cup final. I didn’t expect another late season collapse.

Don’t dare tell me either of those was unrealistic, especially given that we avoided the filth in both cup competitions.

Well, we are hence we are 8 points clear of 3rd place so that's a bit of a silly comment.

Agree on the cup competitions as I referenced in my OP. We over-achieved massively in Europe though so that offsets the disappointment of the domestic cups for me.

Europa League Run was worth 14m to us as well it's far more important in the grand scheme of things certainly from a financial perspective.
 
Morelos was the same player last season, one week unplayable the next missing a barrowload, that is a ridiculous claim to make.
Morelos has scored 29 goals this season while being assisted by a lot of rubbish outwith the occasional good ball from Tav.

Last season on 2 seperate occasions he went 10 games without scoring.

He is a much improved player this season.

Imagine how good he would be with a decent set of attacking midfielders behind him?
 
If he finished 2 points behind Celtic and runner up in both cups we'd still have people saying he fvcked it up, that we have no winners, etc, etc.
I remember a post on FF after a Euro game. Gerrard had said he saw something, made a tactical change and from then on we strolled the game. It was followed by a 400+ liked GIF of Homer Simpson slobbering with deliciousness. We ended up being extremely unlucky to fall out of Europe. That all seems forgotten.
In Scotland we have one expectation and that's to win. The alternative is to come second. We are second and most likely will be at the end of the season. Out of two likely outcomes he's going achieve the latter. We're not third, fourth or sixth. We are better than the sheep and, after watching today, not that much worse than the filth.
Do people think that Gerrard is telling players to go out and tippy tap about square balls? Do people think that he's telling players to attempt crosses when a defender is standing three inches away?
Many of the guys who are playing in our team have been pros for years. All of a sudden they have no tactical awareness? There is an "it" factor missing at the club just now. What it is I can't be sure but one thing stands out this season.
The players currently look like they could try a whole lot more. They looked like that under Pedro and Murty too. The only constant I can find is the double standard of refereeing and never a chance to gain momentum. Being a Rangers player right now means being kicked all day and not being allowed to kick back. I'm not saying that is the 100% for sure reason but if there's another constant I'm all ears.
Also, in the game against the Sheep and Killie we absolutely dominated. In the Sheep game we should have had a penalty but never. In the Killie game there were two occasions that a slightly different knock back would have resulted in an open goal tap in. These are the actual differences right now. Going back to the Hibs game, again, we are the better team yet, partly due to refereeing, we lose two points.
We are not going out and getting blown away by anybody. We won't end the season losing 10 goals to the scum. To listen to some people you'd think we were relegation contenders.
 
There’s no chance the board will sack SG this season. None.

The board made a conscious decision in hiring him knowing full well he had no experience as a first team coach, was inheriting a culsterfck and what the demands of the support would be.

It would be a disastrous decision from the club’s point of view to bin yet another manager so soon and sets the image of a club with no idea what it’s doing or where it’s going.

Gerrard is a long long way from criticism imho. But his mistakes through inexperience are only what anyone should have seen coming. If we are in any way interested in embracing his appointment in the first place, we need to give him at least another season to prove whether he can learn from the things he gets wrong and make the changes needed for next season.

I still don’t buy into the tick-box approach of “EL/2nd place done”. I think expectations should adjust and adapt over the course once the games are being played and the oppisition’s performance is actually seen. In my opinion, we’ve wasted a genuinely good chance to win a title THIS season.

I think SG knows it and recognises his summer window is probably his biggest test yet.

Mmm. Let's look at two games.

Aberdeen at Hampden in October.
Aberdeen at Ibrox five months on.

I don't get that he's learning.

For what it's worth, this season's title could have been won.
 
Morelos has scored 29 goals this season while being assisted by a lot of rubbish outwith the occasional good ball from Tav.

Last season on 2 seperate occasions he went 10 games without scoring.

He is a much improved player this season.

Imagine how good he would be with a decent set of attacking midfielders behind him?

He also downed tools from March onwards last season. His attitude after the Chinese bid was rejected was an utter disgrace.

Gerrard and his coaching team deserve a huge amount of credit for their handling of Morelos this season. And also for the huuuuuuuuuuge difference in form and attitude from the player himself. They've kept him engaged, they've went to bat for him in the media and they've stuck by him with the discipline.

As for the attacking midfielders, does anyone think Gerrard isn't dying inside when he watches Scott Arfield weakly sidefoot golden chances from the edge of the box straight at the goalkeeper on a weekly basis ?
 
I think losing in the cups to Aberdeen has been unacceptable, but you just can't sack a manager after nine months when you knew at the start of the season he had no managerial experience.
My issue is with the board rather than Gerrard we know he would need time now everyone's getting restless and blaming Gerrard he was not going to learn to be a manager in nine months.
 
Other than a few utter mentalists on here and on Facebook I don’t know of anyone that is suggesting we should bin the manager.

We simply cannot keep doing it, despite our limitations and set backs I think our improvement is quite clear. Next season however, is huge for him, as long as he is backed with reasonable funds then we have to make a genuine bid for the title.
 
The usual agitators appear as if by magic. Don't like the board, don't like the manager.

Q - 'Which manager do you suggest? '
A - 'Don't know but I don't like this one'
...or the last one.....or the one before that....or his predecessor.

Q - 'Who do you use as an example of a great appointment'?
A - PLG....what vision from the board'
Q - 'Yes but he failed'
A - 'Yes he was total clown'

and round and round it goes

So is no one allowed to suggest that Arfield or Jack isn't up for the job without suggesting an alternative player instead?

Or that the board at the time deserved credit for appointing PLG?
 
Mmm. Let's look at two games.

Aberdeen at Hampden in October.
Aberdeen at Ibrox five months on.

I don't get that he's learning.

For what it's worth, this season's title could have been won.

And it could have been lost by 30 points with another multi-manager season. .
The Aberdeen games; Hampden, Morelos banned and the team booted all over. Sadiq dives instead of scoring. I'm pretty sure Gerrard never told him to do that.
Last game we have a 100% stonewall of stonewaller penalties. Not only do we not get it, our player is neutered for the rest of the game. And by the rules of that particular match there is another 100% stonewaller against Defoe later on. We get zero decisions in both games. Maybe Gerrard is naïve in that he believes the refereeing might improve. Silly man.
Yes, I wish he would play McCrorie more. There are other things I would do differently but he will learn from this season. WE (FF) have learned some things so I'm sure he has.
There are zero sure things and this whole thread is devoid of any better alternatives. Pep or Klopp are not coming to the SPFL and anything else is as much of a risk as Gerrard.
We are still a wounded animal. We MIGHT have been better off with another manager but we know we could be a whole lot worse off with someone else.
As I've said before, TIAR doesn't matter to me. One of the reasons is that TIAR matters very little to your average tim. It is a short term stick with which to beat us. Timmy is much more focused on stopping 55 because timmy knows that 55 will be 1690, St Paddy's massacre at Neverland and Helicopter Sunday all rolled in to one. Then the house of cards falls.
If stopping TIAR is your thing, then maybe Gerrard might be a bad choice. Maybe.
 
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Well, we are hence we are 8 points clear of 3rd place so that's a bit of a silly comment.

Agree on the cup competitions as I referenced in my OP. We over-achieved massively in Europe though so that offsets the disappointment of the domestic cups for me.

Europa League Run was worth 14m to us as well it's far more important in the grand scheme of things certainly from a financial perspective.

More consistently as in more consistently than we are doing now. Our record against certain sides is truly pitiful.

The European run was great, I loved it, it made me feel serious pride, but it was a long time ago now, and the truth is, OF win aside, we’ve been crap since December. And because we went out in both cups to Aberdeen, I can’t say anything has offset that, particularly last week, that was just heartless garbage that I had hoped we’d left behind when we were on that Euro run.

This second half, although not as dire comparatively, is starting to provoke similar feelings as to what we had under Warburton and Pedro, which is what has more people worrying now. Even that draw against Kilmarnock, there was just a real sense of invitability about that shite performance, and I think when they seem inevitable, that’s when there’s trouble and a lot of unrest.
 
I'm on most social media apps and follow all the Rangers pages. I haven't seen any Rangers fans say Gerrard should be sacked.
 
It's been a season of fine margins. From their injury time winners to missed chances and refereeing decisions (as well as, of course, poor play).

Hopefully SG is able to turn those margins in our favour. I think there are things to be positive about while being concerned by other moments of decision-making.

It's basically where I thought we'd be, albeit the Cup losses have been a genuine blow.
 
One of the most depressing things is that the scum have been hampered by injury for most of the season. For instance today they had 12 first team squad members out injured and yer we gave still failed to take advantage. We need to be ruthless and take every advantage that comes our way
 
If this was Alex Neil in charge, would the attitude be the same, would people be saying we can't keep on changing managers etc?

Doesn't matter who it is, if the results aren't good enough, questions will be asked.
 
Sacking him isn't the answer, but neither is repeating this season over again.

He's signed 23 players and still thinks he needs more. That's not a good sign at all.
 
More consistently as in more consistently than we are doing now. Our record against certain sides is truly pitiful.

The European run was great, I loved it, it made me feel serious pride, but it was a long time ago now, and the truth is, OF win aside, we’ve been crap since December. And because we went out in both cups to Aberdeen, I can’t say anything has offset that, particularly last week, that was just heartless garbage that I had hoped we’d left behind when we were on that Euro run.

This second half, although not as dire comparatively, is starting to provoke similar feelings as to what we had under Warburton and Pedro, which is what has more people worrying now. Even that draw against Kilmarnock, there was just a real sense of invitability about that shite performance, and I think when they seem inevitable, that’s when there’s trouble and a lot of unrest.

I don't enjoy watching us struggle to beat Aberdeen, Killie or Hibs either but we've been consistent enough to be 8 points ahead of Aberdeen in 3rd place so we've clearly been consistently better than every other team in the league outwith Celtic.

If we had turned 3/4 draws against those teams into wins then we would be right in a title race which would mean we were exceeding the supports expectations massively. We can't have it both ways ie we are miles better than everyone else bar Celtic but we aren't ''better enough''. If we were slightly better this season, with a bit more luck we would be right in the title race with a team 3x our wage bill and a massive budget compared to ours.

You can't look at individual results in isolation when you are judging the bigger picture. We could nit pick individual results from any season, even seasons when we won titles and said ''it's a disgrace we didn't beat x, y and z team''. All that matters is where you finish at the end of the season and we are on course to be where we should be given the stage in our rebuild.
 
Is anyone seriously saying he should be sacked?

No one really plenty (like me) not impressed by the continued failure to counter the agricultural tactics of Aberdeen Hibs and Kilmarnock and the failure to drop players who aren’t playing well whilst not playing Katic and McCrorie without explanation.
However we’ve had too managers in recent history and we cannot morph into Leeds or Chelsea. So I’d be sitting down with SG at the split and seeking some explanation on performance and also to know he’s committed to staying next season. If the scum win 9 (I expect they will) his reputation will be tarnished so an offer to manage a championship club with money (real money) might tempt him. You never know in football.
 
An argument for another thread but I don't think having a failed manager with no experience of the club or country is a particularly good idea.

Any conversation about Souness should acknowledge that he had Smith as his number two. When Souness left for Liverpool Smith took over and the rest is history. Anyone fancy the chances of being managed by McAllister at all?

Maybe the club should have insisted on an experienced ‘Smith’ type as his number 2 or at the very least in his coaching team. Neil McCann?
 
Indeed. 0 wins in 5 wouldn't be good enough but again, in the grand scheme of things the club are on target to achieve it's goals from this season outwith winning a domestic cup.

People are nit picking at certain stats to suit their agenda ie how many times have we beaten Killie, Hibs and Aberdeen? That would only be a big problem if we were sitting 3rd or 4th in the league.

Too many of our fans are basing their hissy fits on simple stats and numbers. It's not black and white. We have simply drawn far too many games this season that we should have won. The mentally challengeds have won their last three league games with injury time winners, a 6 point swing.

The margins are fine.

What games did we draw that we should’ve won?

This fine margins thing is a myth.

Margins only become fine if you aren’t good enough, making them matter. To an extent, you make your own luck.
 
If this was Alex Neil in charge, would the attitude be the same, would people be saying we can't keep on changing managers etc?

Doesn't matter who it is, if the results aren't good enough, questions will be asked.

Yes because Europe and other results from the season indicate progression, more than any other manager in recent years.

No one's saying that questions and concerns are not legitimate. However, the likes of you calling for his departure are premature.
 
Yes because Europe and other results from the season indicate progression, more than any other manager in recent years.

No one's saying that questions and concerns are not legitimate. However, the likes of you calling for his departure are premature.

Exactly. I'd be giving Alex Neil more time as well if he'd taken us on a 12 game unbeaten European Run earning us 14m quid and battered Celtic at Ibrox having us joint top of the table for xmas, all in the first half of the season. It's called credit in the bank.

The notion ''it's only because it's Gerrard'' he's getting leeway from some is absolute nonsense and pathetic.
 
What games did we draw that we should’ve won?

This fine margins thing is a myth.

Margins only become fine if you aren’t good enough, making them matter. To an extent, you make your own luck.
Two out of the last three. Hibs we should have won and Killie we should have won.

We had more chances, more possession, more shots and more shots on target. That would generally suggest we should have won that match.
 
I don't enjoy watching us struggle to beat Aberdeen, Killie or Hibs either but we've been consistent enough to be 8 points ahead of Aberdeen in 3rd place so we've clearly been consistently better than every other team in the league outwith Celtic.

If we had turned 3/4 draws against those teams into wins then we would be right in a title race which would mean we were exceeding the supports expectations massively. We can't have it both ways ie we are miles better than everyone else bar Celtic but we aren't ''better enough''. If we were slightly better this season, with a bit more luck we would be right in the title race with a team 3x our wage bill and a massive budget compared to ours.

You can't look at individual results in isolation when you are judging the bigger picture. We could nit pick individual results from any season, even seasons when we won titles and said ''it's a disgrace we didn't beat x, y and z team''. All that matters is where you finish at the end of the season and we are on course to be where we should be given the stage in our rebuild.

We are looking at the bigger picture though. No ones interested in celebrating being ahead of what is a very ordinary Aberdeen side. We should be ahead of them, that should be a minimum requirement for any manager coming in with our budget and guys like Tavernier and Morelos already at the club.

The bigger picture also says that we’ll need to see a lot of changes to the squad once again, which isn’t really ideal. I think that Celtic have been fairly poor this season at times too and fans quite rightly hoped to capitalise on that, but we still look like the team who shits their pants when the big moments come along, that’s really disappointing. There’s just too much turd polishing going on for my liking. Expectations change throughout a season, it’s not surprising that they were so low going in after what we’d just been put through by Warburton, Pedro and then Murty. But the bulk of the positivity now seems to come from saying “look how much of a disaster we were under those guys, we’re a bit less crap now!”
 
No way I want him gone, I’m still right behind him.

At the start of the season there’s no way we should have been expecting to win league, but it’s what the gaffer should have been aiming at, especially after a good start.

We’ve been given chances this season and blew them. The yahoos aren’t good and their management situation has made them worse. So there’s a lot more to it than just saying we’d have been happy with clear second and Europe etc.
 
Yes because Europe and other results from the season indicate progression, more than any other manager in recent years.

No one's saying that questions and concerns are not legitimate. However, the likes of you calling for his departure are premature.

Domestically there has been very little progression. We've won 17 league games all season and knocked out of both cup competitions, our record at Hampden is still hopeless. Our record and attitude in the bigger games is poor, we've got very few answers against the better sides and if its not working, we don't know how to change it.

We are also on course to finish further behind the bheggars than last season.

Were we not supposed to he closing the gap, becoming more consistent, having a strong home record. Finishing above Aberdeen but further behind the bheggars isn't some thing to shout about.

Europe blows Caixinha out the water but domestically isn't not much better than Warburton, Caixinha or Murty. There is still the predictability, the inability to change, poor decision making, loyalty to certain players, a poor attitude and lack of winning mentality. Yet again we struggled to break down dogged, organised sides and our play is slow, one paced, lethargic, impatient, predictable with a squad of players who are still toothless. Then there is our recruitment, question marks over both manager and director of football.

The calls for Gerrard's head will be louder should our next few set of results go against us. A performance similar to the 75 minutes at the piggery earlier on in the season and we will be taken apart. Hearts at home, Motherwell away - the players won't fancy that then we are in to the split and our record agaisnt a Hibs, Aberdeen and Kilmarnock is pathetic.

Summer transfer window isn't a matter of 3 or 4 players either. When you look at what we have currently got, who will leaves who could potentially be sold, there is a lot of work required there as well.

I'd love for Steven Gerrard to turn it around. As a man I admire him and have done since his playing days (even although I despise Liverpool). I just don't see it, there are too many weaknesses for me with no lessons learned.
 
What games did we draw that we should’ve won?

This fine margins thing is a myth.

Margins only become fine if you aren’t good enough, making them matter. To an extent, you make your own luck.

Aberdeen and Motherwell earlier in the season. 93rd minute and 94th minute equalisers.
 
We are looking at the bigger picture though. No ones interested in celebrating being ahead of what is a very ordinary Aberdeen side. We should be ahead of them, that should be a minimum requirement for any manager coming in with our budget and guys like Tavernier and Morelos already at the club.

The bigger picture also says that we’ll need to see a lot of changes to the squad once again, which isn’t really ideal. I think that Celtic have been fairly poor this season at times too and fans quite rightly hoped to capitalise on that, but we still look like the team who shits their pants when the big moments come along, that’s really disappointing. There’s just too much turd polishing going on for my liking. Expectations change throughout a season, it’s not surprising that they were so low going in after what we’d just been put through by Warburton, Pedro and then Murty. But the bulk of the positivity now seems to come from saying “look how much of a disaster we were under those guys, we’re a bit less crap now!”

Aren't Celtic roughly on around the same points at this stage as they were last season at this point? They've won about 12 games on the spin since January....

They aren't any worse this season than they have been. In Rodgers' first season they had the best season in their whole history, of course they were always going to dip from that and come back to a more normal level. The level they are at now is where they are at.

The amount of goals they have scored in injury time v the amount we've conceded. Games we have drawn but dominated, maybe been done by poor refereeing etc is not turd polishing it's just stating facts.

We are closer than you think to them. Are you worrying about taking a 5-0 doing going to Parkhead in a couple of weeks even though we are on a poor run of form ourselves just now? I know I certainly am not, which shows we've made massive strides since last season.
 
Two out of the last three. Hibs we should have won and Killie we should have won.

We had more chances, more possession, more shots and more shots on target. That would generally suggest we should have won that match.

On second half performance we shouldn’t hve beaten Hibs. When they equalized we had no response. Pathetic.

Against Killie just there? Watching us attempting to get a winner was pitiful.

Neither of those two games were we worthy of a win.
 
Aren't Celtic roughly on around the same points at this stage as they were last season at this point? They've won about 12 games on the spin since January....

When they beat us 3-2 at Ibrox it took them to 67pts after 29 games with GD of +39. They're the same as last season, albeit scoring more and conceding less.
 
I have been extremely critical of him and the board and I think it is deserved.
However I don’t want him sacked.

However if the board don’t back him with serious funds (between 15 to 20 mill) after selling Morelos and Tav I think there might be a possibility he will quit.
 
Aren't Celtic roughly on around the same points at this stage as they were last season at this point? They've won about 12 games on the spin since January....

Rodgers first season apart, Celtic are on par basically with their previous few seasons. They've 70 points after 30 games this season. Previously...

17/18 - 68 points
15/16 - 69 points
14/15 - 72 points
 
You questioned the idea of fine margins. I gave you two examples. Injury time equalisers that a little more concentration would have prevented. That's what fine margins are.

Yes and they are only important because we aren’t good enough. That’s my point.
 
And it could have been lost by 30 points with another multi-manager season. .
The Aberdeen games; Hampden, Morelos banned and the team booted all over. Sadiq dives instead of scoring. I'm pretty sure Gerrard never told him to do that.
Last game we have a 100% stonewall of stonewaller penalties. Not only do we not get it, our player is neutered for the rest of the game. And by the rules of that particular match there is another 100% stonewaller against Defoe later on. We get zero decisions in both games. Maybe Gerrard is naïve in that he believes the refereeing might improve. Silly man.
Yes, I wish he would play McCrorie more. There are other things I would do differently but he will learn from this season. WE (FF) have learned some things so I'm sure he has.
There are zero sure things and this whole thread is devoid of any better alternatives. Pep or Klopp are not coming to the SPFL and anything else is as much of a risk as Gerrard.
We are still a wounded animal. We MIGHT have been better off with another manager but we know we could be a whole lot worse off with someone else.
As I've said before, TIAR doesn't matter to me. One of the reasons is that TIAR matters very little to your average tim. It is a short term stick with which to beat us. Timmy is much more focused on stopping 55 because timmy knows that 55 will be 1690, St Paddy's massacre at Neverland and Helicopter Sunday all rolled in to one. Then the house of cards falls.
If stopping TIAR is your thing, then maybe Gerrard might be a bad choice. Maybe.

Come back to me when we know the manager is learning on the hop.

Going by the season so far, that might take a while.
 
Aren't Celtic roughly on around the same points at this stage as they were last season at this point? They've won about 12 games on the spin since January....

They aren't any worse this season than they have been. In Rodgers' first season they had the best season in their whole history, of course they were always going to dip from that and come back to a more normal level. The level they are at now is where they are at.

The amount of goals they have scored in injury time v the amount we've conceded. Games we have drawn but dominated, maybe been done by poor refereeing etc is not turd polishing it's just stating facts.

We are closer than you think to them. Are you worrying about taking a 5-0 doing going to Parkhead in a couple of weeks even though we are on a poor run of form ourselves just now? I know I certainly am not, which shows we've made massive strides since last season.

Yeah but again, are we to be overjoyed that we’re no longer dire enough to take a 5-0 drubbing at the piggery? And to be honest, I think losing by a few goals is a real possibility.

I don’t believe that Celtic were this poor last season. I think they took the foot off in a lot of games because there was no pressure on them whatsoever, that’s an extremely important thing to factor in. We applied some pressure this season, but ultimately shat the bed at big moments. It’s progress for sure, but taking everything into account, it’s not as much as many believe, and I do believe they’ve been poorer too. 2 cup defeats to Aberdeen, piss poor second half of the season, our best players aren’t SG signings, and we’re looking at almost certainly losing the best one. I’m just not getting where the optimism is coming from.

I’ll give you the point about referees though, progress isn’t exactly easy to quantify due to some of what we’vd been subjected to. But yeah. But I don’t think it’s something we’ll agree on, I know you felt Warburton wasn’t really doing a bad job so clearly we have different barometers for progression. It’s just one of those things.
 
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