Rangers’ Betfred Cup defeat to Aberdeen will still be sticking in the throat of Rangers supporters. It’s therefore imperative that they make their mark in another cup competition – the Scottish Cup.
Before people start to think this is a “well Rangers didn’t want it anyway” piece, it isn’t. The Betfred Cup symbolised so much this season with everything that’s happened in Scottish football. The trophy was there to be won and a marker was there to be laid down. Rangers, ultimately, failed to do it in poor fashion.
A bigger sign of tangible progress, however, would be made in winning the Scottish Cup. That’s the competition that many clubs in Scotland would swap plenty to win, and Rangers can’t afford a similar catastrophe.
Steven Gerrard has been brought to Ibrox to win trophies, and that means in the here and now. That doesn’t mean win them next season, or win two the season after. No, the Liverpool icon was brought in to make an immediate impact to Rangers’ trophy room.
Cup stats
Rangers remain the most successful side in the Scottish League Cup. The club have won it 27 times, and losing so poorly against Aberdeen was pathetic.
The Scottish Cup hasn’t been as kind to Rangers in the past. Despite having won it a total of 33 times, it’s Celtic who top the charts in that tournament with 38 successes.
It remains Scottish football’s most illustrious cup competition, and Rangers can right plenty of wrongs with success in it. That doesn’t mean “a good cup run”, it simply means winning the whole thing.
Rangers haven’t lifted the big cup since 2009 – that’s now nine years ago. By the time the final comes around, it will have been a decade since Rangers have won Scottish football’s biggest knockout competition. That is unforgivable. Gerrard could ease plenty of wounds by putting a tick in that box and ending 10 years of hurt for Gers supporters.
In the last three years, Rangers have made the semi-final stages on three occasions and the final in one. Two semi-final defeats to Celtic came after THAT Scottish Cup final against Hibs back in 2016.
Attentions will immediately switch to league and European duty for Gerrard. It should remain in his mind, however, that he could go a long way to easing Rangers’ cup pain by winning the Scottish Cup.
It’ll be tough and tricky against the best Scotland has to offer, but if Gerrard wants to be successful, he needs to oust the lot of them.
