Steven Gerrard’s wait for a first trophy as Rangers manager goes on.
Barry Ferguson has admitted that Steven Gerrard’s decision to bring on Brandon Barker during Rangers’ 1-0 defeat to Celtic on Sunday was ‘strange’.
The former Gers player also brushed off claims that Alfredo Morelos has some sort of ‘mental block’ against Celtic, as he failed to score against them once again.
Minutes after Celtic opened the scoring, they were down to 10 men when Morelos was awarded a penalty, which he missed, as Gerrard opted to bring on Jermaine Defoe and Barker as his attacking substitutions.
Speaking to PLZ Soccer, Ferguson shared his thoughts on Gerrard’s decision-making and defended Morelos, who missed a hatful of chances during the game.
“It’s easy to say in hindsight [that you would have done something different],” Ferguson told PLZ Soccer. “Celtic going down to 10 men, he brings Defoe on. I know Barker might be a strange one to bring on, making that substitution. It’s easy to say.
“But sometimes when you come up against 10 men, the team that has the 10 have a siege mentality about them. It’s difficult. I have come up against it plenty of times in my career. And it’s hard to break down. You have got to give Celtic credit. The last half-hour, they really stuck together and made it tough Up until Celtic had a man sent off, I thought Rangers dominated. After that, I thought they struggled to find that decisive pass or make that clear-cut chance.
On Morelos: “I think he just came up against really good goalkeeping. That’s it. Fraser Forster was in unbelievable form. I thought the chances he had he got on target. There were a couple of off-target. But it was the angles. There were difficult angles. Albeit, he missed a penalty, you would have liked to have thought that he would have stuck that away. But I don’t think it’s a mental block.”
Morelos and his Rangers teammates will want to get back onto the field of play as quickly as possible so they can get the defeat from the weekend out of their system.
On Thursday night, they host Young Boys in the Europa League, as Gerrard’s men still need something from this game in order to book their place in the knockout stages.
Another defeat here would be costly and wouldn’t be great preparation for another Old Firm meeting later on this month at Parkhead.
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