As Ibrox Noise readers will know, we’re going through the summer Rangers signings, where relevant, one by one, having already covered Sam Lammers, Abdallah Sima and Cyriel Dessers.
There were of course 9 captures, but Dujon Sterling, Danilo, Jack and Jose Cifuentes haven’t really done enough to be rated or truly analysed yet, so we will leave them alone, and we all know what Leon Balogun brings, so that one is kind of moot. Only Jack Butland and one other remains and we’ll look at him in the next one.
But that does leave one more, in the form of Kieran Dowell, and in this article, Ibrox Noise looks at the former Norwich man and what he’s brought so far.
Let us be clear – this was not a signing to excite us – his career is lower-league mostly, albeit 20 Premier League appearances in there too, and his highest market value was £3M compared with ex-Carrow Road teammate Todd Cantwell and the £40M he was rated at around 18 months ago.
And the purpose of Dowell was seemingly to cover Cantwell, to provide depth in that position, which in itself is a bit odd given the number of 10s Rangers have.
As it turns out, Rangers have used Dowell a lot, especially in deeper midfield, in a nod to why the season hasn’t been all that great so far.
See, Dowell is a reasonable player, he’s ok. He hasn’t done a lot horribly wrong, and he even had a good one preseason v Hamburg. But in all the serious matches he’s been AWOL. He lasted 61 weak minutes at Killie before being removed, and came on as an ineffectual sub v Servette for Sam Lammers.
And this rather sums him up. Is he garbage? No, and we never claimed he was.
But he is not the level that will take Rangers up a step, and if Rangers start him more often than not, we won’t grow.
He’s an average player, and in a sane world with Cifuentes, Raskin and Cantwell in our midfield, he’d not get a look in.
But we feel he’s one of these players the manager ‘likes’ and will just keep playing him anyway.
We’re not trying to slaughter Dowell, he’s not this season’s worst offender, far from it, but he’s just so ordinary and we’re not totally fond of ordinary players playing for our extraordinary club.
He’s a 6/10-type player, which is underwhelming.
But at least he was a free.