Steven Gerrard shares his biggest regret after Rangers’ defeat

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Rangers lost 1-0 to Aberdeen in the Scottish League Cup on Sunday.

Rangers fell flat at Hampden Park on Sunday evening, and manager Steven Gerrard has told the club’s official YouTube channel that it all boiled down to his attacking options.

The Gers were disappointing going forward in their Scottish League Cup semi-final against Aberdeen, and having had plenty of possession but no cutting edge, they were hit with a sucker punch as Lewis Ferguson grabbed a late winner for Aberdeen.

Rangers will now have to watch on as Aberdeen go on to meet Celtic in the final at Hampden Park, and the lack of attacking options at Gerrard’s disposal has been highlighted.

Alfredo Morelos picked up a suspension in the previous round against Ayr United, ruling him out of the Aberdeen game, whilst Kyle Lafferty was cup-tied having already played in the competition for Hearts.

That left Gerrard to either play a winger out of position or give a rare appearance to Umar Sadiq, who hadn’t played in two months having failed to impress Gerrard following his summer loan move from Roma.

Gerrard went with Sadiq, and he was ultimately disappointing, and even dived when presented with a chance to score, leaving Rangers fans furious with the Nigerian.

Now, Gerrard appears to have taken a couple of shots at Sadiq; firstly, he admitted that his one huge regret is that he picked Morelos to play against Ayr, instead of ensuring that he would be available for the semi-finals rather than having to turn to Sadiq.

Gerrard then added that Rangers will be in another semi-final, and he hopes to have better attacking players when that does happen, another thinly-veiled dig at Sadiq having clearly fallen fell sort of the required standard.

“I probably wouldn’t have played Morelos against Ayr United – that’s one regret that’s swirling around in my head right now, so I’ll learn from that. Listen, I’ll take responsibility for this performance; I pick the players, I pick the game plan, I signed a lot of the players, so if anyone wants to point any fingers, throw them my way.”

“That won’t be our last semi-final. We will continue to push as hard as we can to try and give them more days like this, but when we do get to this stage again, hopefully we will have better players available in the final third that can go and take us that step further. If they’re not with us right now, I’ll find them,” he added.

The comments may simply be praise for Morelos and an admission that Rangers need better in attack anyway, but Sadiq’s poor performance suggests that Gerrard knows the forward won’t make it at Rangers – and any chance of a permanent deal may already be long gone.