EVERY managerial appointment is a risk. In Steven Gerrard, the Rangers board could be about to take their biggest one yet.

This is the final spin of the wheel, the call to go all-in. For all parties, the prizes are great but the stakes are greater.

The decision to hire an untried, untested and unproven manager, especially at this stage, will define the Dave King era.

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Get it right, it will go down as an inspired moved. Get it wrong, and it could backfire even more spectacularly than the ill-fated and costly reign of Pedro Caixinha.

In their three years at the helm, King’s board have gone from one extreme to the other in search of a managerial formula that will bring success back to Ibrox.

Mark Warburton was the up-and-coming coach from England. He failed.

Pedro Caixinha was the foreigner with big ideas and contacts on the continent. He failed.

Derek McInnes was the club hero seemingly destined to return to Ibrox. He didn’t even get started.

And then there is Graeme Murty, the youth coach that answered the call of duty on three occasions. He won’t continue.

So now Rangers find themselves going down a different route, starting again with another new face at the helm and another tranche of signings to follow.

There is no doubt that Gerrard is box-office. The Liverpool legend is one of the most iconic players of his generation and his CV, on the field, speaks for itself.

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But he has yet to take charge of a first team game and he only has a few months of coaching experience behind him in charge of the Reds’ Under-18s.

The online world – one of Twitter, comments sections and forums – can often be a skewed barometer of life away from a keyboard. It is its own universe at times.

And the reaction from swathes of Rangers fans to the potential arrival of Gerrard only serves to underline why people can lose all sense of reality when they stare at a screen and immerse themselves in a different dimension.

Too many have been caught up in the glitz and the glamour of Gerrard’s name, been lured in by the prospect of high-profile arrivals and recalled famous moments the midfielder produced for club and country.

But they must remember it is Gerrard the manager that Rangers are courting, not Gerrard the player. They are very different propositions.

Comparisons have been made with the revolution that Graeme Souness kicked off at Ibrox but that thinking is nonsensical and the theory falls down at every turn.

Unlike Gerrard, Souness was still a terrific player when he arrived here and, unlike Souness, Gerrard won’t have Walter Smith alongside him in the dugout.

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But, most importantly, Gerrard won’t be able to go and sign the biggest names from England in an attempt to swat aside the competition in Scotland.

The pros to Gerrard are obvious. His name alone will boost Rangers’ profile, while it will also demand instant respect from the squad that he will inherit.

It should allow him to attract a certain calibre of player to Ibrox this summer and the work ethic, the desire and the knowledge that took him to the top of the game will undoubtedly raise standards on and off the park.

Gerrard’s inexperience as a manager cannot be overlooked, however. And that is why King and Co. are dicing with their legacy by taking Mark Allen’s recommendation and running with it.

Get it wrong, again, and the questions over their football decision making will grow louder and louder as Celtic close in on ten-in-a-row. In that case, the evidence would be overwhelmingly against them.

The flip side to that scenario is the one that appears unlikely to come to fruition. That is the hope over expectation path.

The gap to Celtic is unlikely to be bridged in one almighty leap. Instead, it will take a series of gradual steps and we could discover sooner rather than later whether Gerrard is the man to overcome his former Anfield boss Brendan Rodgers.

It will either be a masterstroke or a moment of madness. For Rangers’ sake, they must be able to say ‘I told you so’.