Steven Gerrard and Rangers embrace cup final stimulus and urgency of stopping Celtic's trophy run

Steven Gerrard can still remember his tears as a seven-year-old when his team lost a final. The Rangers manager has a chance now to lift his club from the long sweep of eight years without a trophy, in Sunday’s League Cup final at Hampden Park.

An inspirational figure in one-off games, Gerrard will need all his magnetism to stop Celtic winning a 10th consecutive major trophy. But the Old Firm fizz is back, with Gerrard’s counterpart, Neil Lennon, accepting that many neutrals want Celtic’s run of trebles to end in this Betfred Cup final - for the sake of change. Glasgow is humming again with the prospect of the city’s two giant clubs returning to something approaching parity under two charismatic leaders.

Celtic’s dominance is in danger if Gerrard can infuse the zeal of his own playing career, when he won two FA Cups, three League Cups, a Champions League and a Uefa Cup. Always he performed as if possessed by a love for finals.

“It’s either in you or it’s not,” he says. “I was someone who, even at seven or eight, was all about the cup final. It was all about getting to the cup final with your school team, your amateur team. I remember I was playing for Whiston juniors, seven or eight years of age, and if we didn’t get to the cup final it was tears. And if we didn’t win the cup final it was more tears. You play football to be involved and be around cup finals because that gives you the opportunity to be a winner.

“Surely - I can’t speak for every footballer - but surely that's got to be inside you and you want to be part of that?”

His team will read those words and feel the urgency. Trophies have never been Rangers’ problem. They have won the Scottish title 54 times, the Scottish Cup on 33 occasions and the League Cup 27 times. Yet their collapse and demotion to the fourth-tier in a financial scandal is still being rectified. Their last major trophy was the 2010-11 league title and they have appeared in one final since - the 2016 Scottish Cup, which they lost to Hibs.

No wonder pundits are building this up as a turning point game, a chance for the true Old Firm wrestle to return. Celtic though have won 11 games in a row in all competitions and are not looking to abdicate.

Lennon knows Gerrard is a specialist in cup final heroism but backs his players to resist it. “I think he’s one of the best Premier League players of all time -  and obviously one of Liverpool’s greats in an era when they weren’t winning titles,” Lennon says.

“I always think of Istanbul [the 2005 Champions League final] and think - what an outstanding individual performance to win a game, it’s up there with any of them. Maybe that will rub off on the [Rangers] players and inspire them. They’ve definitely improved, Rangers - but then so have we. We have our own targets and objectives for the game. They’re good that way, the players. They don’t listen to the outside noise. They keep everything nice and calm, and that experience is invaluable for these games.”

Gerrard, who took charge in May 2018, approaches his first cup final as Rangers manager with a wealth of experience of showpiece games. The bigger the test in his playing days, the more he liked it. Nor was he daunted by the weight of history in his first full managerial job.

He says: “When I got in my car on the first day to come up here, on May 4 [2018], I knew before I got on the motorway what I was getting involved in, and what this club was about, because I’d looked in on it from afar from so many years.

“As someone who’s not a statto on the game I know enough to be educated, and to know the demands and the expectations at this club. That’s only been confirmed.”

Gerrard is a dreamer but also a rationalist. He says: “Finals are more often than not decided by what happens around both boxes. It’s pretty simple. People talk about the occasion and there’s a lot of nonsense that comes with finals, ticket requests and the media – with all due respect. It’s about what happens on the green pitch and who handles both boxes better.”

If there is an extra burden however on this Rangers team it is to end that eight-year wait for a trophy and begin the power shift. “It shouldn’t bring pressure to the players because it’s not their fault or their responsibility,” Gerrard argues. “They weren’t around when that happened, or when the club suffered in all the years that it did. The players, most of them, are new to this. Most of them are recent and have come on board since I came in.

“I think it would certainly help [to win a trophy], and it would certainly give this group of players a lot of confidence and belief. If you look at where the two teams are now, there’s an advantage because Celtic have been at this stage a lot more than my group of players. But we have an opportunity to really put a spanner in them and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

The new Old Firm starts here.