Steven Gerrard, still one of the Saudi Pro League’s biggest names, features in the trailer for its upcoming Netflix documentary for less than a second.
And yet, to credit the makers of what will inevitably be an excellent piece of naked propaganda, they appear to have encapsulated his time at Al-Ettifaq perfectly.
Knees slightly bowed, arms outstretched, face agonisingly flummoxed, he is contorted by fate into the universal symbol for “coach whose overpaid striker really should have scored that one”. Here is a man to whom events are just happening, a victim of circumstance he just can’t grasp hold of, stuck in a loop of apologetically clapping supporters in quarter-full stadiums.
These events include being booed off the pitch last Friday after a 2-0 home defeat to newly-promoted Al-Qadsiah – featuring a 35-year-old Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – that left Ettifaq 11th, without a league win since 14 September.
There was also a post-match meeting with his director of football Hatem Al-Misehal, which Gerrard insists was routine but must have been slightly tenser than usual after fans had screamed “get out” during his apology lap.
Among the clubs Ettifaq are trailing are such giants as Al-Khaleej, Al-Raed and Al-Riyadh. The last club have never spent more than £1m on an individual player and relied on Andre Gray and ex-Sunderland mistake Didier Ndong last season, although both have now left.
The primary catalyst in Riyadh’s rise from 14th to sixth appears to be hiring Sabri Lamouchi, which highlights how much of a difference a manager – even one who only lasted five months at Cardiff – can make in the nascently fluid Pro League.
With Ettifaq’s squad including Georginio Wijnaldum, Seko Fofana, Moussa Dembele, Demarai Gray, Marek Rodak and Karl Toko Ekambi, last season’s sixth-place finish should really be the bare minimum. This isn’t an issue of other clubs simply spending more. Gerrard’s side are not scoring enough or defending consistently well – the two conceded against Al-Qadsiah were pathetically poor.
As was the case at Aston Villa, Gerrard is masterminding a steady regression. It appears the expiry date on the previous manager’s lingering tactical and psychological impact is somewhere just shy of a year.
After that, we’re left with pure, unfiltered Stevie G. That fuelled Villa to two wins from 12 games, and has Ettifaq with four losses from six in a significantly less competitive league. They face the top two in their next three matches.
The majority of existing evidence suggests Gerrard is a middling-to-poor manager, certainly not one of the few capable of tangibly or sustainably improving clubs.
Across 86 matches since leaving Rangers, Gerrard has won just 30, around 35 per cent. One of the most significant criticisms of his work at Ettifaq is a lack of consistency in tactical structure and lineups. He’s not so much building a future as barely surviving the present.
This begs the question – how bad does it have to get to lose his job? Admitting he was organising training sessions around Liverpool matches would have been enough at a lot of clubs, but Gerrard’s value to Ettifaq is far greater as a PR attraction than a coach.
That £15.2m salary isn’t based on his illustrious post-playing career. It’s not like the British media would have much to say about Dammam’s premier footballing establishment without him there.
But if and when he loses his job, where does he go next? What’s the next step down for a man who has seemingly proven he’s not even fit to manage a mid-table Saudi Pro League club? Australia? India? His new home nation of Bahrain?
Or is it back to punditry, welcome on the Sky Sports sofa alongside fellow legends trading on their former glory after failed managerial attempts (and Jamie Redknapp)?
Or is there an option perhaps more insulting, one in which Gerrard is continually paraded around the Middle East and US by clubs which prioritise social media metrics over results?
It’s hard to imagine him treading Wayne Rooney’s path of contrition through the EFL when he has already managed in the Premier League. Here is a test of how serious he is about coaching.
Gerrard now has a six-year career behind him. His Rangers success – which ultimately boiled down to one brilliant league campaign in a two-team competition – now appears a bizarre aberration.
If, as he claimed, the Ettifaq move wasn’t solely motivated by salary, then it was about reputational therapy. This was supposed to be a springboard back to Europe’s top five leagues, instead it looks like a trapdoor to managerial oblivion and irrelevance.
Gerrard may survive this slump, helpfully backed by a Liverpool-supporting chairman, but another appears inevitable. Average attendances at Ettifaq’s Prince Mohamed bin Fahd Stadium are already down to 5,355 this season from 7,311 in 2023-24 – still less than half the 15,000 capacity.
A new elite-standard training ground was recently opened at no small expense, even for the second-largest petrochemicals company in Saudi Arabia.
These billionaires may not mind spending money, but they are loathe to waste it. It won’t be long until the damage Gerrard is doing on the pitch outweighs any benefit he has off it.
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