Is Steven Gerrard ready to make a big personnel switch?

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Is Steven Gerrard ready to make a big personnel switch?
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - DECEMBER 19: Kemar Roofe of Rangers celebrates with teammate Cedric Itten after scoring their team's third goal during the Ladbrokes Scottish Premiership match between Rangers and Motherwell at Ibrox Stadium on December 19, 2020 in Glasgow, Scotland. The match will be played without fans, behind closed doors as a Covid-19 precaution. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

A lot of Rangers supporters felt Rangers missed Alfredo Morelos the past two matches, while being highly critical and dismissive of Swiss star Cedric Itten recently.

Regulars will know we quite like Itten, and the reaction to his being starved of service on Wednesday night was for a tonne of fans to call him a donkey and to be dropped.

While we agree that Morelos in theory is our best striker, he isn’t on form, and Itten is growing in prominence more and more.

Yesterday when it came to our team selection, we agreed that Defoe was probably the best choice, and the strongest option, but we’ve changed our mind in recent weeks on Itten, who has started to really impress.

Not, however, to some fellow fans.

Yesterday’s cameo, which saw the crucial second goal headed in by the Swiss star, was the key moment of the match which helped earn the full three points and was the latest goal by a striker increasingly in form, who’s starting to look like he is a serious candidate for main man up front.

Since 29th of November v Falkirk, his record is two assists and two goals in 7 appearances in all competitions, including just two starts (Poznan and Falkirk).

There’s no denying Itten is close to being a first choice.

Does he have the bully-boy attributes of a Morelos on form? No, but then that’s not the kind of striker he is. Morelos also isn’t on form and isn’t producing that kind of destructive forward play at present.

Many fans believe Morelos would have helped v Motherwell, in breaking down a stubborn defence. Thing is, as Stevie said about St Mirren, it wasn’t scoring that was the problem, it was conceding messy and bad goals.

Yesterday was about finding space and opening up a resilient back line – that was fundamentally what Joe Aribo, Ianis Hagi, Kemar Roofe and of course Itten were able to do.

And we think it’s high time the Swiss got more time to show what he can do.

Because he already is now.

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3 COMMENTS

  1. Would be happy to see Itten and Aribo come in for Arfield and Morelos and get them hitting form by the time the old firm comes around.

  2. I have to agree Ceddie as SG called him yesterday , is ready to start a league game he looks keen and is perhaps understanding Scottish aggressive kick and run . He’s definitely got good techniques of shooting , heading so if he could work to get good positioning he could be more successful.

  3. Isn’t it great to have the options we have though? Think Ced the Ted deserves a run, although an in form Buff is still the number 1 striker at the club in my opinion. Ced getting a run and some goals could be exactly what we need to get Alfie firing and if all else fails we still have Defoe and Roofe! Remember when the best we could muster was Little, Sandaza and Kyle?

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