Has Stevie lost faith in £7M pair?

Rangers made a few signings last summer, actually not that many. The bulk of work had already been done, and indeed the only new capture in the summer of 2020 to enforce his way regularly into the team has been Leon Balogun.

And that brings us to the £7M pair that maybe haven’t proven to be value for money at all.

Kemar Roofe and Cedric Itten arrived in a blaze of glory, a double signing with fanfare and knobs on, but come the end of the season, Roofe’s campaign has been littered with inconsistency and injury, while Itten just hasn’t been able to force his way into the starting XI at all.

Now, before we go on, we always remember the Borna Barisic Fallacy, which shows that even well over 12 months can elapse before a player fully settles in – Barisic didn’t kick start until ‘that’ goal in August 2019, having arrived the previous summer year.

But Barisic only cost £1.5M and it was clear from his outstanding performances for Croatia that the lad could play.

Meanwhile Itten is a fringe Swiss international who has now lost his place, while Roofe has never even been capped for Jamaica.

“Give them time”? The classic fan response to any player not delivering?

We just don’t know. Rangers don’t have money to waste and few fans are entirely convinced by these two – even Stevie isn’t, and barely uses Itten for starters.

Roofe has been a bit more involved, given Rangers completely lack good options for the right wing, meaning he rather plays there by default, if fit.

His goals stats are very decent – 14 goals in 29 appearances, but weirdly as RW his assists are completely atrocious, at just 2.

He seems a player Rangers don’t quite know what to do with – he’ll never usurp Alfredo Morelos as striker as long as the Colombian is at Ibrox, and he is a bit of an ineffective winger, truth be told.

Then there’s Itten – we’ve liked what little we’ve seen of him, but he’s not been able to impact the team the way he wanted.

Both of these players have scored some absolute pearlers – some gorgeous goals in there, with Roofe’s in Liege up there as one of the greatest goals of all time.

But like Itten, something just hasn’t quite clicked yet overall and we doubt many fans would be sad if both of them moved on.

Not every signing will work out, and the manager’s judgement and choices in selection can’t be questioned given what a stupendous season we’ve had.

So it is what it is, and we’ll see if either of them remains past summer.