Rangers’ time remaining to sign a striker is drastically running out, with no names linked at all and just 11 and a half hours to go until the window is done.
While winger Oscar Cortes looks like he’ll make it before the gong goes, the desperate lack of striker is just not good enough.
Rangers fall short for goals scored in the SPL, and fall short for overall conversion rate. We fall short for shots, on 442 lagging almost 50 behind Celtic, and it’s even worse for ‘on target’ with around the same shortfall behind them.
We need a top quality talisman up front, but as things stand, the board and recruitment are letting the manager down.
Philippe Clement needs a reliable hitman at the apex, and with just Silva and Dessers, Rangers are badly behind Celtic. They have Kyogo, Maeda, Abada, O’Riley, Oh… they have a glut of forwards and strikers who score tonnes of goals. They have three attackers in Scotland’s top 10 goalscorers, while Rangers have just one, and Tavernier.
Which means we need, over the rest of Thursday, to get something done and bring in a forward, either a 9 or an 11, who knows where the goal is.
Right now, as of start of Thursday afternoon, that objective seems a mile away.
Rangers lost Danilo and Sima for long term – that was a lot of goals in there, even if neither forward was the all-round solution. Dessers won’t score a barrowload, and Silva is struggling.
That’s it, that’s all Rangers have up front, and the board needed to act quickly – their time is running out to get something done, and at this point any striker addition, while welcome, is clearly a last-minute panic signing.
It’s not ideal, it’s not what Clement needed and we had hoped at Ibrox Noise Towers to wake up on a shiny new month with the good news an exciting name was coming to Rangers to bag the goals.
Sadly not. Silence.
At this point the best we’ll do is a loan kid from some Championship side who the usual mob in our support will big up as the Second Coming.
It’s definitely not ideal.
So we challenge the board and Mr Nils Koppen to surprise us.
Because this is the Director of Football Recruitment’s gig and thus far he’s been an appalling failure.
One or two good additions today changes that.
Over to you Nils.