Former Aston Villa manager deserves credit for the job he did at Rangers but his generation is yet to make its mark in coachingThe 2018 documentary charting Steven Gerrard’s routinely astonishing life and times had sadness as a backdrop. Gerrard was – and presumably still is – scarred by events of April 2014, when that slip against Chelsea turned the Premier League title tide against his beloved Liverpool. “There’s not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t think about what if that didn’t happen,” Gerrard said. One got the impression lows lingered for far longer than epic highs.We were entitled to believe there would be redemption. Gerrard was in the midst of restoring Rangers’ reputation from the manager’s...
Former Liverpool captain was a Villan but not a villain on his return to the ground where he made his nameSome at Anfield rose to their feet to applaud a returning figure from their past. Danny Ings was back and he was coming off the bench. Meanwhile, Steven Gerrard grimaced in his distinctly damp vigil in the technical area. He has scripted some of the more improbable tales in 21st century football through sheer willpower but a man whose Liverpool career ended amid the humiliation and farce of a 6-1 thrashing at Stoke knows special occasions do not always go as planned.This didn’t. Not for Gerrard, though his Aston Villa side proved awkward opponents in defeat. Nor, perhaps, for the...
Driven by his league title failure as a player, Aston Villa’s head coach has become a compelling prospect as a managerThere is an interesting, and no doubt very common phenomenon called parasocial interaction. This is where people feel they have an intimate, reciprocal relationship with a famous person, a belief that by consuming images of that person, by thinking about them, the mirror becomes a two-way glass; that they can see you too.We all get this to some extent, right down to the entry-level version where you glimpse a famous person in the street and, as you walk past, automatically say hello-all-right-how’s-it-going-bro-safe-see-you-later-ha-ha-ha-be-lucky-how’s-Tanya, because obviously you must know them, and then five paces down the road realise it was Howard from...
With Newcastle enriched and the middle tier confident, Aston Villa’s new manager enters an extremely tough-looking leagueWhen Ray Wilkins left Paris Saint-Germain in 1987, it seemed entirely natural that he should join Rangers. He was, after all, joining two England internationals in Terry Butcher and Chris Woods at Ibrox. A year later they would be joined by another in Gary Stevens. There was the immediate context of the Heysel ban on English clubs competing in Uefa competitions but, still, that is another world.It seems almost incomprehensible in today’s financial environment that top English talent would flock to play in Scotland. And that perhaps is the most significant aspect of Steven Gerrard’s appointment as manager of Aston Villa – less what...
Steven Gerrard has elevated his team to a point where they could sell players and still be too good for the competitionCeltic must rue the part they have played in the ludicrous modern-day promotion of pre-season friendlies. On the same weekend as West Ham swaggered to a 6-2 win at Celtic Park, Rangers defeated Real Madrid at Ibrox. In football terms, neither result is remotely relevant; these outcomes did, however, fuel the narrative of Glasgow’s green half being in disarray as those in blue seek to turn last season’s title win into a period of dominance.When the real stuff started, Midtjylland followed the trend set by Ferencvaros, Cluj and AEK Athens by bundling Celtic out of the Champions League at...