STEVEN Gerrard has insisted the best youngsters coming through the ranks at the Hummel Training Centre have a chance of featuring in his Rangers team - starting in the Europa League opener against FK Shkupi on Thursday.
Gerrard gave several promising kids run-outs in the pre-season friendly against English League Two club Bury at Ibrox on Friday night and was rewarded with some impressive displays.
Serge Atakayi, Kyle Bradley, Glenn Middleton, Zak Rudden and Aidan Wilson all came on in the second half of a game the home team won by a resounding 6-0 scoreline.
Robbie and Ross McCrorie also became the first brothers to play in the same match for Rangers since Dutch duo Frank and Ronald De Boer did so against Hearts in 2004. The goalkeeper and the midfielder, though, weren't on the park at the same time.
Middleton, the former Scotland youth internationalist who was signed from Norwich last season, was the pick of his contemporaries and provided assists for two of the goals. Rudden completed the rout shortly after taking to the field.
There has been huge interest in the seven signings former Liverpool and England midfielder Gerrard has made since being appointed in May and six of them featured on Friday evening. But the man who broke into the first team at Anfield as a teenager has stressed that youngsters will be rewarded with game time if they catch his eye in training and age-group matches.
“If you’re good enough you’re old enough," he said. "I sat the young lads down on day one or may two and just said: ‘Look you’re coming over to Spain for us to have a look at you on and off the pitch, see what you’re capable of, see what you’re about. Go in and mix it with the payers in front of you and let them know you’re coming for their places and you want to challenge them'.
"It’s not the older lads and the younger lads here, it’s us. We are all one. Everyone is fighting for a shirt. In terms of what we have asked them to do, the volume of training, the intensity, and putting their bodies through what they are probably not used to, they have been magnificent. Friday night was a chance for them to go out there and show us what they have got and they haven’t let themselves down.”
A crowd of over 40,000 flocked to Govan on Friday evening to see the first Rangers game that Gerrard had taken charge of in public - they had played a closed doors game against Welsh minnows The New Saints on Tuesday afternoon.
The 38-year-old, who only took up his new role at the start of June, stressed he had no problem with the intense scrutiny he will be under at Ibrox or the high expectations of supporters.
"It is difficult for me to ask for patience and say this should happen, that should happen, because these fans want better and they deserve better," he said. "This is the most successful club out there so it is a difficult thing to do to ask for patience. Players have to be ready for the pressure and the responsibility of being a Rangers player. If you can’t handle it you are in the wrong place.”
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