STEVEN GERRARD was delighted that a ruthless Rangers hammered home their superiority over Motherwell to move within two points of Premiership leaders Celtic.

The Light Blues recorded their biggest win of the campaign to date as they beat Motherwell 7-1 at Ibrox thanks to doubles from Scott Arfield and Eros Grezda and strikes from James Tavernier, Alfredo Morelos and Glenn Middleton.

Rangers made the most of Hearts’ defeat to Kilmarnock and Celtic’s slip-up against Livingston to close the gap at the top of the table and climb to third spot.

Gerrard said: “I am very pleased with the players and I am very pleased with the result.

“It was a really good reaction from Thursday night. We asked the players to bounce back today and put on a show for the supporters, we certainly delivered that.

“That’s what I have been asking for from the players right from the start.

“We’ve used the words ‘ruthless’ and ‘relentless’ and that’s what we were today.

“We tell them to forget the scoreline, don’t think about the scoreline and just keeping playing and pushing until the final whistle.

“I said to them at half time ‘we are 3-1 up, they are a man down, what are we going to do’?

“I asked if they were going to continue to get carried away in a fight and in the emotion of it all or if they were going to be calm, if they were going to place with a precision and a tempo.

“I told them we would get opportunities to make the scoreline as big as we wanted and the players have delivered.

“Sometimes when you are playing the last fixture of the weekend and other teams win it adds pressure and you have to handle that and cope.

“Over the weekend it’s been the opposite. Teams around us and above us have given us an opportunity to close the gaps and that really helped us before the game.

“We told the players there was an opportunity for them. We told them to put a performance in that showed they are desperate to stay in touch at the top.”