Trevor Steven: Steven Gerrard has instilled his winning mentality to reinvigorate Rangers and Scottish football
I saw it at close quarters when I played opposite Steven Gerrard in a Rangers v Liverpool legends match.
The death stare, as Peter Crouch calls it. The fire in his eyes. It was a friendly match, but Gerrard was still clattering into Alex Rae.
He is so driven, so hungry. And instilling some of that winning mentality into his Rangers team created a landmark moment on Sunday.
Rangers are Scottish Premiership champions again, for the first time in a decade, and that achievement will reverberate around the whole country.
For the blue half of Glasgow, it is unimaginably massive. While both teams have won nine titles in a row before, Celtic were on for 10 this year, and Rangers fans were panicking. Now that has been stopped.
But it is also huge for Scottish football. North of the border, the game revolves around the Old Firm. This keeps the clubs level pegging.
All the work Rangers have done over the last few years has been for this moment.
From their financial collapse and starting again in the fourth tier to the successive promotions and appointment of Gerrard in 2018, the club have been rebuilt and reinvigorated.
But for all the work done off the field, you are only as good as the team on the pitch and Gerrard has got Rangers performing at the highest level possible.
Rangers roll on with unshakeable focus
It’s amazing how well Gerrard has done under the utmost scrutiny.
Glasgow can be a volatile place to operate in football. Everything at Rangers and Celtic is amplified. The pressure is huge and it can feel like a goldfish bowl.
Of course, he has also had to build a squad and develop a playing style.
Rangers have got the recruitment right at each step and Gerrard has worked out a good balance of risk and reward tactically.
What Gerrard has done so well is foster the right mentality: not just of winning but of understanding what it means to play for Rangers. That was probably his biggest challenge of all.
The players have done fantastically well. They have only dropped eight points and conceded nine goals all season. Their focus has been unshakeable.
It’s easy to say “it’s only Scotland”, but they have shown their quality in Europe too.
They’ve beaten Galatasaray, Standard Liege and Lech Poznan, and drawn twice with Benfica. That’s restored a huge amount of credibility to the club.
What next for Rangers and Gerrard?
The job may be done, but you know Gerrard won’t take his foot off the gas.
There are records up for grabs and Rangers will want to go as far as they can in the Europa League.
This is the start of a new era for the club and Celtic have gone from being the hunter to the hunted.
We can’t forget that Celtic won three trebles in succession, so a lot depends on what they do next. It all starts again in August.
But while there is no guarantee Rangers will dominate, that won’t stop their fans dreaming of winning 10 titles in a row themselves. These are exciting times at Ibrox.
Gerrard will want to lead Rangers into the Champions League next season. Beyond that, it’s hard to say how long he’ll stay.
There’s only one place he is going to go next, however. A return to Liverpool is on the horizon, and both Gerrard’s and Jurgen Klopp’s contracts are due to expire in 2024.
He may still feel like a novice in managerial terms and want another couple of years in this job before taking on his dream one.
Gerrard will have seen what happened with Frank Lampard at Chelsea and know you have to be careful what you wish for.