Principles have their place
None of what happened at McDiarmid Park yesterday is likely to have done anything for Steven Gerrard’s peace of mind.
When there is one team who always finds a way, and another one who, domestically speaking, can’t seem to find any way then the Rangers manager’s open distress at the weekend’s turn of events in the Scottish Cup intensifies.
If St. Johnstone had been playing Motherwell or St. Mirren on Sunday I’m not sure the pitch in Perth would have been declared playable, but when it’s the last eight of the cup and Celtic going for thirty-four wins in a row in cup competition in front of a live television audience then a mudbath suddenly takes on a different complexion.
But when that nearly four-year-old run comes under threat as the minutes tick away the only thing that prevents you from wondering what Superscoreboard will sound like tonight in the event of an Old Firm double whammy is that Celtic have their own unique brand of indefatigability.
And so it turned out to be.
Not that Celtic winning will push Gerrard over the edge. His concerns would seem to revolve around why his team can’t be more like Celtic.
The manager has taken to wearing his heart on his sleeve since the turn of the year but even allowing for that Gerrard’s self-declared admission that he was leaving Edinburgh on Saturday night to contemplate why he was feeling as low as he has done at any point over the last two years was remarkably candid.
And a troubled day also said a lot about his character.
Fans don’t overly concern themselves with matters of principle. They’re pre-occupied with winning matches and don’t particularly trouble themselves with how the process is carried out.
That is certainly true of this season with regard to Celtic and Rangers.
The winning of the league title has had an all-consuming effect on people like the caller to Saturday evening’s Superscoreboard who said he wasn’t bothered about Celtic’s European exit at the hands of F.C. Copenhagen because it would lessen the workload for Neil Lennon’s players and focus their attention on domestic matters.
Never mind the implosion at home against CFR Cluj earlier in the season which cost Celtic qualification for the Champions League and, consequently, tens of millions of pounds in lost revenue.
Never mind the modest nature of the Danes on Thursday night. The quadruple treble will compensate for everything.
The prospect of preventing that achievement from taking place is what enthuses the Rangers support, but not the Rangers players if their manager’s now periodic comments about their desire is anything to go by.
But the events which preceded the game against Hearts at Tynecastle on Saturday night might bring Steven Gerrard into conflict with some of those he is so desperate to please.
There will be Rangers fans, I would suggest, who will retrospectively hold it against Gerrard for leaving out Alfredo Morelos and then losing in Edinburgh.
A Scottish Cup exit and the possibility of a second season without a trophy under the manager will be partly blamed on binning Rangers’ top scorer from the squad in response to his breach of discipline.
But Gerrard was being true to himself and a lifetime in the game dedicated to meeting the highest standards of professionalism.
If Morelos couldn’t match those standards, then Gerrard couldn’t compromise his own principles and put the player in against his better judgement.
He put himself, and his club, before the convenience of overlooking Morelos’ indiscretion, and for that Gerrard should be complimented and not criticised.
The game in Edinburgh was of the highest importance to Gerrard on a personal level, but not to the extent he would betray what he believed in to save his own skin.
If fans have their club on a pedestal and cherish the institution they should understand the step Gerrard took.
Now he has entered a period of contemplation which is being interpreted as Gerrard pondering his own future.
But I can’t see a man who says he must be true to himself being of a mind to leave his team when they are still involved in Europe and obliged to explore the arithmetical possibility of yet catching up with Celtic in the league.
The end of the season? That might be a different matter in the event of an empty trophy cabinet at a club still looking for a tangible sign of having re-emerged from the dark days of administration and liquidation.
In the meantime, it is unfathomable that a team comfortably through to the last sixteen of the Europa League have once again fallen to a struggling side who can’t find a way to make it into the top eleven in the Premiership.
The only explanation I can come up with is that the best team in the world, Liverpool, wouldn’t have been taken apart by lowly Watford on Saturday if football was an exact science.
But what happened to his former team will be of no consolation to Gerrard at his present place of employment, not after posting his intention to indulge in some soul searching with regard to the immediate future.
Meanwhile, Celtic go to Livingston Wednesday night looking battle weary after a glut of domestic and European fixtures in 2020.
They don’t care much for the place where they imploded earlier in the season and suffered a rare defeat.
But if they rise above the conditions and the opposition it will give Gerrard further food for thought.
“Two seasons without a trophy isn’t good enough,” he said at Tynecastle. “It’s not what I’m about.”
Last week, in a newspaper interview with his former Anfield team-mate, Danny Murphy, Gerrard said if he went two years without a trophy he’d be sitting beside Murphy in the Match of the Day studio.
Was he speaking in jest or looking into the future?