A Rangers supporter has made an impassioned public plea for Steven Gerrard to make a sensational return to Ibrox, with pressure mounting rapidly on current manager Derek McInnes following a chastening European exit. The call came during a phone-in on talkSPORT’s Breakfast show, in the immediate aftermath of what was described as a new low point for the club.
Rangers’ latest setback arrived on Thursday night, when they were eliminated from the Europa League at the qualifying stage, beaten 3-2 on aggregate by Polish side Jagiellonia Bialystok. Having gone into the second leg already trailing 2-1 from the away fixture, Rangers needed a positive result at Ibrox to turn the tie around. Instead, they could only manage a 1-1 draw on home soil, a result that wasn’t enough to overturn the deficit and condemned the club to an early and thoroughly embarrassing European exit, going out in the third qualifying round.
For a club with Rangers’ European pedigree and ambitions, bowing out at such an early stage of the competition represents a significant blow — not just in terms of prestige, but in terms of the message it sends about the direction of the club under its new management. The nature of the exit, throwing away a result that should have been salvageable at home, only added to the sense of crisis building around Ibrox.
The scale of the reaction to Thursday’s result has to be understood in the context of just how difficult Derek McInnes’ start to life as Rangers manager has already been. Despite only being appointed to the role in June, the 55-year-old is already facing intense scrutiny, with his side yet to register a single win in his first four matches in charge.
That winless run stretches across both domestic and European competition. Rangers began their Scottish Premiership campaign with a draw away at Dundee United, before suffering a 2-1 home defeat to Hibernian the following Sunday — a result that was met with boos from supporters inside Ibrox at full time. That defeat alone left McInnes’ side already five points adrift of leaders Celtic after just two league matches, a gap that will have alarmed a fanbase accustomed to competing at the very top of Scottish football. The Europa League exit to Jagiellonia has now compounded that difficult start still further, extending the winless run to four matches and adding a genuinely humiliating European scalp to the list of concerns.
It’s a strikingly difficult beginning for a manager who arrived at Ibrox with a strong reputation. McInnes had impressed during his time in charge of Hearts, guiding them to a second-place finish in the Scottish Premiership the previous season — form that made him an appealing candidate for the Rangers job when the vacancy arose. The gulf between that reputation and the results he’s produced in his opening weeks at Ibrox is a large part of why the reaction to Thursday’s exit has been so severe.
Adding further weight to the pressure now surrounding McInnes is the fact that supporters and pundits alike have already begun drawing comparisons with his predecessor, Russell Martin, whose own time in charge of Rangers ended in dismissal before Halloween the previous year. That comparison isn’t an idle one — Martin’s spell in charge was defined by a similarly poor start, and it ended in a sacking that came only a matter of months into his tenure. The suggestion now being floated is that McInnes, despite having been in the job for a comparatively short period, could be heading toward a similarly abrupt conclusion if results don’t improve quickly.
That backdrop set the stage for Friday morning’s talkSPORT phone-in, where a Rangers fan calling himself Mal rang in during the Breakfast show to vent his frustrations directly to hosts Alan Brazil and Ray Parlour
Speaking in the aftermath of the Europa League exit, Mal made clear he believed further disappointment was already on the horizon, pointing to Rangers’ upcoming Scottish League Cup tie against St Mirren on Sunday as the next opportunity for things to go wrong. He was blunt in his assessment of where the club currently stands, suggesting that the domestic league campaign was effectively already lost given how far Rangers found themselves behind Celtic so early in the season.
It was in the midst of that frustration that Mal turned to the idea of a sensational return for Steven Gerrard, the man who remains the most successful manager in Rangers’ recent history. Gerrard’s time in charge of the club between 2018 and 2021 is remembered as one of the great modern eras at Ibrox. He ended a decade-long wait for the club to win the Scottish Premiership title, doing so in truly emphatic fashion during the 2020/21 campaign — guiding Rangers to an entirely unbeaten league season and finishing an extraordinary 25 points clear of rivals Celtic. In doing so, Rangers became the first team in the club’s history to surpass the 100-point mark in a league campaign, racking up 102 points across that historic, unbeaten title-winning season.
That level of dominance has left an enduring mark on the club’s supporters, and it’s easy to understand why, at a moment of crisis, a name like Gerrard’s would be the first one many fans turn to. Mal was unequivocal in expressing that sentiment, stating that he would take Gerrard back at Rangers immediately, without hesitation, and insisting that Gerrard remains the only man capable of delivering another league title to Ibrox.
Gerrard’s departure from Rangers came in November 2021, when he left to take charge of Aston Villa in the Premier League — a move that represented a natural step up the football pyramid at the time, given the heights he’d reached with Rangers. His time in England didn’t reach the same heights as his Ibrox spell, and he later moved on to manage Saudi Pro League side Al Ettifaq, a role he held until departing in January.
Since leaving that post, Gerrard has been out of work, though his name has continued to be linked with various vacancies as they’ve arisen. He was reportedly open to the idea of taking over at Burnley in April, at a time when then-manager Scott Parker was under significant pressure. He was also mentioned as a potential interim option at Liverpool during the same period, floated as someone who could step in had the club opted to part ways with Arne Slot at any point last season — though that scenario never materialised.
Notably, this isn’t the first time Gerrard’s name has been connected with a return to Ibrox since his original departure. He came close to taking the Rangers job again last October, in the aftermath of Russell Martin’s sacking, when the club was searching for a new manager following that turbulent spell. Ultimately, though, Gerrard decided against taking up the opportunity at that time, paving the way for McInnes’ eventual appointment instead. Given that history, the renewed public calls for his return carry an added layer of significance — this isn’t simply fans reaching for a nostalgic name with no realistic connection to the club’s current situation, but a manager who has already been sounded out, or at least strongly linked, with the position within the last year.
Beyond his broader comments about wanting Gerrard back, Mal also used his call to direct pointed criticism at specific decisions made by McInnes during the defeat to Jagiellonia. He was particularly critical of the timing of the substitutions made during the match, describing them as having come far too late to have any meaningful impact on the result.
Mal singled out summer signing Lawrence Shankland, who had got on the scoresheet during the tie, for particularly harsh criticism, describing his overall performance as the worst on the pitch despite his goal. He also criticised midfielder Ryan Naderi, questioning his aerial ability and ball-winning despite his height advantage, and was similarly unimpressed with the defensive performance of Emmanuel Fernandez. Taken together, Mal’s assessment painted a picture of a Rangers side that, in his view, currently lacks a settled and functioning starting eleven, going as far as to suggest the team doesn’t currently have a clear captain either.
Mal’s parting message to McInnes was blunt and unambiguous. While acknowledging the manager’s effort, he predicted that McInnes would be dismissed from his post by Halloween — a specific timeframe that directly echoes the fate that met his predecessor, Russell Martin, whose own reign was ended before the same date the previous year. Mal signed off his call by sarcastically thanking McInnes for the “horror shows” Rangers had produced so far, framing his prediction as one rooted in a genuine expectation that results won’t turn around quickly enough to save the manager’s position.
With the Europa League exit now confirmed and pressure mounting from multiple directions — fans, phone-in callers, and pundits alike — McInnes’ attention will need to turn quickly to Sunday’s Scottish League Cup tie against St Mirren. Given the winless start to his reign across four matches, and the increasingly loud comparisons being drawn with the swift unravelling of Russell Martin’s tenure, that fixture is likely to be viewed by many supporters as an early litmus test of whether McInnes can begin to arrest what’s rapidly being characterised as an escalating crisis at Ibrox.
Whether calls for a sensational Steven Gerrard return gain any further traction will likely depend heavily on how Rangers perform in the coming weeks. Gerrard’s status as the most successful manager of the club’s recent history means his name is unlikely to disappear from the conversation easily, particularly given how close he reportedly came to a return just last year. For now, though, the immediate reality is that McInnes remains in the Ibrox hotseat, tasked with turning around a winless start that has already drawn unwelcome comparisons to one of the most chaotic periods in the club’s recent managerial history — with Sunday’s cup tie against St Mirren offering the first real chance to begin changing the narrative.