SOME lead by their actions, others lead by their words. All have the ability to make their peers follow their example and to inspire those around them.
Steven Gerrard was the epitome of a captain as a player. As a manager, he is a figurehead that is befitting of the position that he holds at Ibrox.
He cannot do it all alone, however. A Rangers squad that was once bereft of character is now brimming with confidence and Gerrard has winners around him, a group of players that have the personality to wear the shirt.
It has taken time for those traits to turn into titles but first team coach Michael Beale knows there is a manner and mentality about the squad that delivered a 55th league flag and inscribed their names into Rangers' folklore last term.
“Having leaders in your team is really important and I think everyone looks at leaders in terms of age and experience, that’s not always the case," Beale told the Rangers official souvenir magazine.
“There are different types of leaders. There are your cultural leaders, the people who know about this club and have been successful here.
“That might be Allan McGregor and Steven Davis but that could also be members of staff around the building who have been through the dark days and who have also enjoyed the good days. It is important we give them their voices to speak and express themselves.
“There are also leaders within the team, the captain and vice-captain, who set the standards every single day, so they are almost like standard-bearers for training and for the way that the team behaves and vocally they are leaders.
“But there are also technical leaders and sometimes they get overlooked. The technical leaders are the ones in the games where it is tough, they go and get on the ball and get you playing.
“That might be some of our younger players like Glen Kamara, Ryan Kent, Joe Aribo or Ianis Hagi.
"So your standard-bearers might be the likes of Scott Arfield, Ryan Jack, James Tavernier and Connor Goldson, and Borna Barisic is growing into that every single day as well.
“And then you have your elder statesmen, the ones that have been around the block such as Steven Davis, Allan McGregor and Jermain Defoe.
"So we have really been promoting that everyone leads in their own way and that is something that has been going in in the background and I am really proud of.
“I’m proud of how the players have grown this year and that is one of the defining things for me this season, how proud I am of so many people within the club.”
Rangers had tried and tried again under Gerrard but there was no sense that the title win was third time lucky. It was, in fact, the culmination of Gerrard's evolution at Ibrox.
That process hasn't just seen a squad of players transformed, it has meant upgrades and improvements in every area on the park and off it and Rangers now have the rewards for their efforts.
Beale said: “I have a fear of failure, not a fear of success, so I tend to want to work really hard to must make sure that we continued to win and continued to play well.
“I tend to be someone that is drilling that into the players every single day. There was never a moment where I sat back and thought that the league was done, I just wanted us to focus on every single game and around Christmas I was talking to a lot of the staff about that.
“Martin Littlewood works with us as a psychologist and we did a lot of talking about that and the messages that we send in training and the message that the manager sends in his meetings and the coaches in the unit meetings about staying on task and not looking too far ahead and at the league table. It is just about focusing on the next game.
“I think in Scotland you play three rounds of 11 fixtures to get to the split and we wanted to reset each time to make sure that at the end of the 11 fixtures we were winning.
“We managed to do that this year and it was important that we won the Old Firm head-to-heads, but we also wanted to win against every team and against all the other teams combined.
“There were a lot of little league tables going on that ultimately led to being top of the one that everyone looks at.”
When Rangers returned to pre-season action last summer, they did so as the game and the country continued to adapt to the Coronavirus-impacted world around them.
The time in lockdown was used to reflect and to analyse. That work individually and then collectively would result in the title being won as Rangers completed an unbeaten Premiership campaign.
Beale said: “That might be a player going in the gym and spending a particular amount of time in a certain area to bulk their body up, it might have been another player working on his footwork and agility to get slightly sharper or it might have been another player working on a certain technical aspect of their game.
“So we sat with each player and that is why we say it is a management team, because for Steven to get around 30 players plus the goalkeepers is very difficult.
“That’s why we spread out and work in smaller united, so that the coaches can get in there. A big thing during the lockdown as well was the welfare of the players.
“The players all had different circumstances: some are dads, some are single men living in a flat in the city centre on their own and not being able to do much and some were living away from family, so it was very much an effort to manage the person behind the player and I think if the person is happy then football takes care of itself.”
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