THE Steven Gerrard era officially gets underway today, and I’m sure that almost every Rangers supporter is as excited as I am about what may lie ahead.

Will the Liverpool legend be a roaring success and lead a title challenge, or will he be a flop like Pedro Caixinha and be out of the door before Christmas? Nobody really knows for sure, but given his calibre and his pedigree as a player, I know where my money is.

The thing that Rangers need in the dugout more than anything at the moment is real leadership, and Gerrard comes with bucketloads of that essential quality. He will instantly command respect from the players, and judging by what I have heard about the way he conducted himself in the Liverpool dressing room while captain at Anfield, he won’t be shy in letting people know exactly what he thinks.

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With the greatest of respect to Pedro Caixinha and Graeme Murty, they just didn’t have the same aura about them. Caixinha never really grabbed the attention of the playing squad, and he was an unknown quantity. And I think that Murty felt as though he couldn’t really stand up to the stronger personalities in the Rangers team coming as he was from the under-20s.

There will be no danger of Steven Gerrard - who won a Champions League title, over 100 caps for England and captained his country on numerous occasions - having any sort of inferiority complex going into any dressing room in the world, let alone the current Rangers one.

When I was watching some of the players biting back at Graeme Murty during the Scottish Cup semi-final defeat to Celtic, I just laughed at the thought of them trying something like that with Walter Smith, Graeme Souness or Jock Wallace. It all comes down to respect, which then leads to discipline, a crucial ingredient for any successful side.

In my time, working under Jock Wallace, the players would maybe have a wee moan amongst themselves at times if we were unhappy at something the gaffer was doing, but not one of us would dare breathe a word back to the manager about it. If you did, you were left in no doubt that it would be the last time.

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So, it is important that Steven Gerrard goes in there on his first day and shows them who is the boss, and I can’t see it unfolding in any other way. It has to be his way or the highway, and knowing the type of character he is - and his assistant Gary McAllister is cut from exactly the same cloth - then there will be no issues on that score.

Something that may prove a little more difficult for him is his recruitment, and it is so vital that he gets this part of his summer rebuilding job right. I am sure that he has been in close contact with director of football Mark Allen ever since it was announced that he was to be the new manager, and that they have targets in mind, and hopefully he will be given a reasonable budget to play with in order to strengthen the team.

The signings of Allan McGregor and Scott Arfield, as well as securing Jamie Murphy on a permanent deal, represents an encouraging start for me, and I look forward to seeing who else may arrive at Ibrox during this transfer window. There are clearly areas of the team that need strengthened, no more so than the centre of defence, and it is important Rangers get their business done early with the European qualifiers on the horizon already.

I will also be interested to see if Gerrard can bring the best out of some of the more inconsistent members of the squad, particularly Josh Windass. The boy has all the attributes to be a top player, and learning from one of the best goalscoring midfielders the British game has ever produced can only benefit him.

It’s all looking positive for Rangers for the first time in a long while, and long may that continue.