Steven Gerrard has to win a domestic cup competition this year, it’s as simple as that.
His European record has provided some protection from criticism but now, in his fourth year as Rangers manager, he really has to delivery more of what the Light Blues faithful crave – big, shiny, silver things being waved at them.
The league remains the priority, of course, given that it comes with the added £40milion bonus of Champions League qualification, but with just one final appearance out of nine attempts, it is a record that needs to be improved, especially when you consider how we exited both competitions last season with Celtic already out.
Livingston showed against Celtic exactly what they are capable of, the worrying thing, for me, is that the goal Andrew Shinnie scored is exactly the type we are susceptible to, see St Johnstone and Motherwell as recent examples of our vulnerability to simple, long balls, right down the middle, but it is at the other end of the park where we need to sharpen up before it costs us more wins and puts more pressure on the back four.
Normally, seeing us have ten different goal scorers in the league would suggest that the responsibility of scoring goals is being shared around the team, however, we really could do with Kemar Roofe, Alfredo Morelos or Fashion Sakala going through a purple patch – it can be the difference between a win and a draw as we found out to our cost on Sunday.
I’d expect minimal rotation, a strong starting XI, and a similar intensity to what we saw for the first 60 minutes against Motherwell, hopefully, we’ll get the right result this time.