With Rangers dropping points again against Hibernian on Boxing Day, we head into this weekend’s Old Firm clash with Celtic looking to eradicate their three-point gap at the top of the Scottish Premiership table.
There’s far more than just the look of the table when it comes to this game though and manager Steven Gerrard is no stranger to the big ticket matches in football, nor derby rivalries for the fans given his experience of Liverpool v Everton during his playing days and he’s obviously keenly aware of what this clash means to the Ibrox faithful.
Speaking to Sky Sports as build up to the game continued this week and he met with the press, Gerrard basically pointed out that asking whether this clash was a ‘must win’ was actually a bit of a stupid question.
“I’ve never, ever played in a derby that hasn’t been must-win. If we were sitting above Celtic right now, I’d be saying it’s must-win. So every game against Celtic is must-win. No one should really ever ask a Rangers manager if an Old Firm game is must-win because you are only going to get one answer.”
There’s plenty of football still to play in 2018/19 and the gap to top spot is narrow, even allowing for their game in hand, but it needs to be remembered that Gerrard is still learning on the job and there are obvious improvements we can make to the squad so we’ll just have to see what happens in the months to come.
Becoming a more serious challenger shows the improvements so far, but we’re not the finished product.
With this being the last match before the break, there’ll certainly be no excuses for a lack of effort or running.