Despite Steven Gerrard’s lack of managerial experience at the time, his spell at Glasgow Rangers will go down quite fondly with the majority of the Ibrox faithful, despite his rather acrimonious departure in November 2021.
He led the Light Blues to their first Premiership title in a decade during the 2020/21 campaign, ending their Glasgow arch-rivals’ dominance of Scottish football in the process and also re-establishing the Light Blues in Europe, twice reaching the Europa League round of 16 on his watch.
The former Liverpool captain wasn’t without fault, though, especially in the transfer market. One of his biggest howlers came during his first few months in charge as he signed winger Eros Grezda for a fee of £2m, and it soon turned out that the brains trust at Ibrox clearly had the wool pulled over their eyes.
How much did Eros Grezda cost Rangers?
Gerrard wasted no time in trying to improve the Rangers squad just weeks after his announcement as the club’s new manager in 2018, eventually signing 15 players, although Grezda was perhaps the worst when it came to performance on the pitch compared to financial outlay.
Such was the hype surrounding his arrival from Croatian club Osijek that Albanian journalist Ermal Kuka even predicted that the Gers would go on to make a substantial profit on their initial £2m signing.
He proclaimed: “I was surprised they were able to get him for such a low price. I think that is a real steal.
“In two years, I can easily see them selling him for £20 million, because it is different when you buy from Croatia or you buy from a club like Rangers.”
Safe to say, this prophecy that Grezda would eventually go on to become the club’s record sale was horribly wide of the mark. He played just 17 matches for the club, scoring twice (a brace against Motherwell in a 7-1 mismatch) and he cost the club £1m per goal, proving to be a substantial waste of precious funds.
His career at Ibrox was all but over following an alleged spitting incident while playing for the Colts team against Ballymena United at the start of the 2019/20 campaign, and the failed move represents one of Rangers’ biggest transfer failings in the previous five years.
He is currently without a club following failed stints back in Croatia, Hungary and Turkey, making the £2m outlay on the winger even harder to comprehend given how poorly he has done since leaving Rangers.
Gerrard did learn from that misstep and became much smarter when it came to delving into the transfer market over the next couple of seasons at Ibrox, but there’s no getting away from just how much of a shocker he had with this Albanian dud.
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