By his own admission, the last few years of Steven Gerrard's life have been "a whirlwind". A managerial rise that has been as sharp as his playing days, the iconic former Liverpool captain has gone from coaching teenagers in youth football to setting up a Premier League team in just four years.
In between those particular jobs just happened to be a stunningly successful stint reshaping the reputation of one of the biggest clubs in British football at Rangers. Last year, Gerrard's men romped to the Scottish Premiership crown by becoming 'invincible centurions' with 102 points, ending the suffocating Celtic stranglehold in the process by denying them a 10th straight title.
But it's been the last few months where the speed has really started to gather for 'Gerrard: the manager'. After sacking Dean Smith on November 7, Aston Villa were officially announcing him as their man just five days later. It brought his relatively short but unforgettable time at Ibrox to a sudden and perhaps shock halt.
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Asked to take charge of one of English football's most famous names with just three full years of senior management behind him, the opportunity may have arrived too soon for others. Gerrard, though, has never been one to shy away from a challenge.
With Villa sitting 16th in the Premier League table, just two points above the relegation zone after 11 games, he was tasked with steadying the ship, preserving their status and ultimately building for the long term. Just a week into the job, he was overseeing a 2-0 win over Brighton at a raucous Villa Park. The Gerrard era had begun.
"It's been a whirlwind to be honest," Gerrard tells the ECHO in an exclusive interview. "It all happened really quickly. I was at Rangers one minute and next thing I know I am competing in the Premier League and I am going back to Anfield and that type of stuff. But listen, I have loved the journey so far."
The international break has given Gerrard some brief respite after an intense four months. Since joining a Villa outfit who were hovering just above the drop zone, he and his staff have brought them up to a respectable ninth in the division. But with just 18 games of Premier League experience to tap into, the former midfielder admits he is learning on the job every day in the fervent and often bewildering world of top-flight football in England.
"I have had a bit of a break this week and had a chance to get back [to Liverpool] and see my family and stuff, so I will go back in fresh for the remaining nine games and hopefully we can try and put ourselves in a good spot to try and build from the summer," he says.
"Especially as it all happened so quickly, there wasn't really a chance to reflect or have a full pre-season. It was almost like we were in and we only had three or four days before the [first] game. So the speed of it was one that we just had to learn on the job sort of thing.
"So I am just looking forward to the summer and hopefully we can get there in a good place and a full pre-season will be really important. Obviously the window being open gives us a chance to get some help in. I've been around the Premier League a long time as a player and I learned an awful lot, but managing is different.
"Being on the sidelines is a bit different, so every day is a learning day and I am just trying to be a sponge and every time I am around different managers and playing different styles, formations and tactics, I am just trying to learn as much as I can."
To remember Gerrard in his Liverpool pomp - a raging bull of a midfielder who often shaped the course of games through sheer force of will alone - it is a contrasting image to picture him now as a studious tactician who is able to remove emotion from the decision-making process.
Despite having played for coaches as renowned for their pragmatism as Rafa Benitez, Fabio Capello and Gerard Houllier, the prevailing picture of Gerrard is one of snarling defiance in the face of improbable odds. More fire than ice, as a footballer with a once-in-a-lifetime ability to do it all, the idea of him as an elite-level coach was not always the obvious future.
"Did I always know that Stevie would be a manager? No," says Jamie Carragher. "I think the feeling in the dressing room was that I would be a manager when we were players.
"If I went into management, I'd maybe get a job near the bottom of the Championship or the top of League One. Now, I don't know it. I never played at that level, I've never coached at that level, I don't know the players, I don't know who'd be my assistant manager. All these things are just not my area of expertise.
"Over the years [working] in TV, I've learned things there but with coaching, you're starting from level one. You're building your way up and learning and making mistakes, that's what Stevie is doing. That's why it is so interesting but why it is also so commendable, it shows what type of guy he is.
"So it is not him saying: 'I am Steven Gerrard, I can do what I want'. It is: 'No, I need these people around me to help me become the best I can be.’ I think it is really commendable."
Another of Gerrard's former team-mates, Michael Owen, tells the ECHO: "I have known Stevie all my life really. He is driven and he would never, ever settle for second best but I think he has developed into what he is now as a man and a leader.
"I think naturally Stevie is quite a shy lad and he wouldn't go into a new dressing room when he was younger and be the loudest in the dressing room. But he developed into that. He obviously got the Liverpool captaincy early and then developed into that leader.
"It is absolutely brilliant to see and who knows where he is going to go with his career? It's a bloody hard career path and even at this level he is at now, it is staggeringly good."
To help him upon his arrival in Birmingham, Gerrard re-enlisted the expertise of Gary McAllister, Michael Beale, Jordan Milsom, Tom Culshaw and Scott Mason. All five had helped him during his time at Rangers and the manager says their input at both Ibrox and Villa Park has been invaluable.
He says: "We're all very much about trust. It's about working out where you believe you are strong and where you need support within your group and your team. We've obviously managed to keep some staff that were already at Villa as well to try and make it as strong as possible. These are people who I have known for a long time and again it is about working out pretty quickly how they can make me stronger. That is the idea."
One element of the job Gerrard is keen to explore further is coaxing out performances from star players through one-to-one conversations. From the famously combustible Alfredo Morelos at Rangers to the shyer, more reserved type in Philippe Coutinho at Villa, the 41-year-old has had to quickly work out how to approach the various and often wildly differing personalities that exist within the modern dressing room.
"You always try to manage the same in terms of the collective but you know that certain things make different individuals tick. All players are different with different personalities. So you have to have different styles with how you work with each player. Everyone has a different character and I've got to work out pretty quickly, going into a new job, what makes them all tick."
In modern football, the idea of the manager being the all-seeing oracle with full autonomy is a dated one. Head coaches no longer oversee every aspect of a football club in the way they did during the era of managers like Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger.
Clubs now have entire departments dedicated to specific areas such as scouting and recruitment and the 'sporting director' model is a prevalent one throughout English football in 2022.
At Villa Park, Gerrard works with Johan Lange, a Dane who joined the Villans in 2020, and it represented something of a spectacular window for the pair when they were able to entice Coutinho alongside Lucas Digne from Everton, Calum Chambers of Arsenal and goalkeeper Robin Olsen, who joined from Roma on loan.
It is often the establishment of a harmonious working relationship between the coaching department and the sporting director’s team that allows a modern team to thrive. Liverpool themselves have found that out with spectacular results in recent years as the bond between Klopp and Michael Edwards has strengthened over time.
Gerrard says: "I think the important thing in that situation is that all the thinking is aligned. There is obviously a process. You have a scouting department, you have a recruitment department and there are people that support those departments and then you have the football department.
"The owners and the CEO are there as well, so it is very much about everyone being aligned. Communication is obviously a key thing for me and we prepare lists where we feel we need support. We managed to do some good, strong business in the last window. We were delighted with the business we did, so if we can have a similar window in terms of positivity [in the summer] then it should put Aston Villa in a better place.
"In terms of how it works, everyone communicates and it is something that doesn't stop. Even when one window shuts, straight away you're asking about when we get to certain points and it is an ongoing process."
Inevitably, as Gerrard chats from the rooftop of Liverpool's Hope Street Hotel ahead of a charity fundraiser for Football For Change, the topic of Klopp is broached.
The German was a regular sounding board during Gerrard's fledgling days as a coach and was someone who the Villa boss reached out to when he was taking those first tentative steps on the path towards Premier League management.
Gerrard adds: "That was one of the most important things for me when I decided to become a coach, I wanted to come back to the Academy and I wanted to speak to Jurgen Klopp for that bit of advice.
"His advice to me was: 'Don't go in with the name on your back. I've seen so many ex-players who played at a decent level just automatically think that they can become a good coach or a good manager. It's important that you go and do two years with Liverpool's youth teams away from the cameras, go and make mistakes, find out how you want to play, try formations, try tactics. Work out what team of people you need around you because you'll be good in some areas, you won't be good in others and get your team. Then you will know. You'll get the right feeling and then an opportunity will come. And then you can decide what you want to do from there.'
"That is exactly how my journey started. I have not always wanted to do this, it has just fallen into place."
