BY ALAN TEMPLE – @CCP_Sport
KEVIN THOMSON reckons Steven Gerrard must find Rangers’ answer to dominant Celtic star Scott Brown, insisting the Hoops skipper is maturing ‘like a fine wine’.
Former Ibrox ace Thomson has seen his old Hibernian teammate and close friend grow into an increasingly powerful presence in the last two campaigns under Brendan Rodgers, excelling on the pitch and emerging as a dressing room giant as they claimed consecutive trebles.
It is a winning mentality that has been notably absent at in Govan under the successive regimes of Mark Warburton, Pedro Caixinha and Graeme Murty, but thrown into particularly sharp relief when derby day rolls around.
The last seven meetings against Celtic have seen Rangers succumb to an aggregate scoreline of 21-3.
And Thomson believes the players must respond to the demands and expectations that he fully expects Gerrard to bring with him.
“There needs to be a spark,” said Thomson. “It’s okay having that within the manager, but there needs to be a spark among the players.
“You need good changing rooms at good clubs. You look at Scotty [Brown], no-one can tell me he doesn’t do a good job across the city. Steven has done the same thing for every dressing room he was in at Liverpool, that’s the sign of a good captain. He’ll be looking for someone that can do that for Rangers.
“[Brown’s] like a fine wine, Scotty, he’s getting better and better with age, although he’s not looking any better! That’s testament to the type of person he is and the drive to be the best he can be. That’s the challenge.
“He is fundamental to the way Celtic work. You take Scott Brown out of that team, they aren’t as good a team. If you get on top of him and make it difficult for him then they aren’t as good a team.
“If there are young boys breaking though, I would be saying ‘there is your benchmark’.”
Thomson speaks from a position of experience. He scored the winning goal in his first outing against the Hoops – a 1-0 win in March 2007 – and only tasted defeat once in the fixture during three-and-a-half years at Ibrox.
The assumption that the Gers would stand up to their fiercest foes was merely one facet of the lofty expectations within that group, which won five major honours and reached the Uefa Cup final in his time at the club. It is a steely belief that Thomson longs to see again.
“The standards within the club when I was there were simply expected of you,” recalled Thomson, now coaching the under-13s squad at Rangers as well as running his own academy.
“There were no ‘rules’. It was assumed that you would be on time, wouldn’t muck about on your phone, you would train hard.
“That’s the environment Walter [Smith] created and those will be things Steven [Gerrard] has done his whole life and will expect that of the players. Those players will need to rise to that challenge.
“The expectations at Rangers are that you need to win, the fans demand it, the manager will demand it and the players should demand it of themselves. Am I saying they’ll go on and win the title? I don’t know, no-one knows.
“But he needs to put a team on the pitch good enough to bridge the gap with Celtic.”
**Kevin Thomson was speaking at the Scottish FA UEFA B Licence taking place at Oriam, Edinburgh**
