Gerrard: 'we must be more clinical'

Steven Gerrard has claimed that his Ranegrs side has 'a lot to learn' before they can be considered as true title contenders this season. 

The Ibrox side stuttered to a narrow win over Hamilton Academical on Sunday, as a sole Daniel Candeias strike was enough for them to take the three points and return to the Scottish league summit. ​Candeias opened the scoring after just three minutes in Glasgow, but the hosts were wasteful in front of goal, and were lucky to escape the match with maximum points. 

After the match, manager Steven Gerrard shared his frustrations over the poor finishing from his side, and issued a warning to their title hopes should they continue to be so careless. He told 'Sky Sports': "I'm happy with the win and the clean sheet, but we've got a lot to learn in terms of the performance," said Gerrard. "We put 22 corners in today and over 30 crosses. We created enough opportunities and got into some really exciting areas of the pitch."

He continued: "But we had zero killer instinct. That's a concern. I'm not really interested - with all due respect - in being top of the league right now. We were top before, then went and lost and drew our next two games. So, what's more important to me now is what we can learn from the performance. It's blatantly obvious we have to learn to kill teams off in the final third."

Gerrard also bemoaned his side's lack of finishing as a reason for not being able to rest players ahead of a tough match against Hibernian on Wednesday. He concluded: "We should have had the game won in the first 15 minutes.I should have had the luxury of being able to take players off the pitch and give them a rest before Hibs on Wednesday, which is going to be a tough game."