Ryan Kent’s Rangers race is run

If ever one player did NOT live up to the challenges placed upon him yesterday, it was Ryan Kent, who is, as Neil McCann rightly says, ‘taking a battering’ today.

The winger has completely vanished the past 12 months, and it wasn’t for his cracking matches v Dortmund, Ryan Kent would have been a literal entirely empty jersey pretty much since Giovanni van Bronckhorst took over.

He was the one many laid a marker to – that he had a big night at Ibrox ahead of him, in front of his home fans, up against the side who reckoned he wasn’t very good and sold him – he was to prove Jurgen Klopp wrong, destroy his deeply weakened defence and show the world his qualities on the biggest stage there is.

What a complete flop he was, yet again, and we have to admit we’re kind of done with him now.

Kent had so, so much talent, but he’s absolutely lost it this past 12 months, ever since our new manager took the helm. Is it related? Possibly – he was signed by Steven Gerrard and appears to have suffered as much as anyone his exit.

And there was the massive miss at the end of Seville which appears to have killed him as well, a miss he could have won the UEL with.

But last night really was a disappearing act – one cut in from the left, and wild shot over the bar was all Kent really had to contribute to a match which was made for him to shine in. A lack of desire, a lack of runs, a lack of any kind of guts at all.

We slaughtered Backpass Barisic for his negative passing, taking the safe option, but Kent was NOT helping him at all, and made next-to-no runs for him to put the ball forward to. By comparison, as absolutely rubbish as Fashion Sakala was, at least he made the runs even if he couldn’t control the balls or the balls themselves were wildly off target.

Kent didn’t even do that.

His Rangers race is run, and he needs to move on now. He is welcome to sign a precontract in January and leave Rangers, he’s as empty a jersey now as Glen Kamara is.

We are done completely with Ryan Kent, and if he starts again, we will struggle to back him any more given he didn’t back us or himself last night.