Rangers legend Barry Ferguson has paid the current Rangers team a big compliment by stating that they are on par with Brendan Rodgers Celtic team.
The incumbent Leicester City manager led his Parkhead team to an unbeaten domestic season in 2016/17 when Rangers were back in the Premiership under Mark Warburton, for the first time since the 2012 downturn.
Barry Ferguson believes that Steven Gerrard’s present crop are the real deal but that they must get over the line to prove it.
Speaking to the Daily Record, he said, ” The truth is Rangers have been exceptional all season and they haven’t been given enough credit for the standards they have set.”
This Rangers team would have gone toe-to-toe with Brendan Rodgers Invincibles never mind the current Celtic side which is a pale shadow of what it was back then.”
Ferguson, who won the Scottish title five times in his Rangers career, was renowned for high standards on the pitch and after last week’s draw at Motherwell he has a slight concern about complacency creeping in to this Rangers team, against the backdrop of chaos at Celtic.
He stated, ” My worry here is simple enough. On Sunday at Motherwell, these players looked to me as if they had taken their eye off the ball.”
“They started slowly and didn’t snap out of it until they were a goal down and right up against it.”
“The manager said afterwards that he had to give them a bit of a blast at half time and that didn’t surprise me in the slightest. Every time the camera panned to him during that first half you could see how irritated he was becoming with the performance.”
“This wasn’t the Rangers side we’ve been watching all season. None of the crisp, sharp passing. A lack of energy, urgency and movement.”
Standards
Ferguson knows all about the demands and what it takes to be a winner. He knows the quality that Gerrard’s team possesses but they must show their hunger and determination.
“Complacency was always my biggest fear whenever we were in a comfortable position on top of the league.” said the veteran of Helicopter Sunday.
“I’d hear all the talk about ‘champions elect’ and I hated it because the job is never done until it’s done. I always worried that complacency would set in and that, as a team, we’d allow our own standards to slip.”
“The next thing you know, you’ve been dragged back into a fight and it can be very difficult to suddenly flick the switch back on once you’ve slipped into a comfort zone.”
“And that’s the biggest danger Rangers face today. But if I could ask these players one question it would be this, do you realise you could become legends and heroes to hundreds and thousands of people for the rest of your lives?”