It may have taken 10 years and a handful of managers, but Rangers FC, led by Steven Gerrard, finally returned to the top of Scottish football.
Not only did they lift the league title, they did so in style, creating a 20 point gap between themselves and arch-rivals Celtic, who have suffered a dismal season by their standards.
Unbeaten, drawing just four times and winning the other 28 games, the Ibrox Stadium team have now rightfully celebrated, but the season is far from over, with a Europa League still up for grabs.
Facing Slavia Prague on Thursday, Steven Gerrard will be ready as always, determined to go as far in the competition as possible.
For Grégory Vignal, who spent time as the former Liverpool midfielder’s assistant for a year at Rangers, the triumph in the league is a result of three years of hard work.
He told L’Equipe: “He arrived with his ideas, full aware he’d accepted a big job, because there’s a lot of pressure at Rangers. In such a big club, you need to have a vision of the project. The culture is the team before the manager. He knows how to bring the right people with very defined roles.
“He developed a mentality, which is more or less ‘no excuses’. He had everything in his head to bring his experience, improve the training centre”.
As for the type of manager he is, Gerrard isn’t an all hands on deck kind of person, relying on the team he’s put in place around him as much as possible.
Vignal continued: “He’s the boss. You don’t call him Stevie or Steven, you call him boss. He delegates everything to his assistants, trusts them, with an English management style. He remains as a boss. He’s mourned the player he is, and he’s in a new dimension”.
