So Rangers have secured Robin Pröpper in time for the Champions League deadline, meaning he will be included in the squad for next week’s trip to Poland to face Dynamo Kyiv.
Pröpper, pronounced ‘Prooper’, we believe, is 30 and has played in the Dutch Eredivisie his entire career. He’s never set domestic foot outside Holland and has 380 appearances in senior Dutch football, so there is an element of risk in signing an older player experiencing his first club away from native soil.
Indeed, remember Joey Veerman? He couldn’t handle it. Rangers had to pull out of the deal after the Dutchman, still with PSV to this day, realised his homesickness and walked away from the transfer.
Pröpper clearly doesn’t have that issue (yet) but it is a risk when a player of his more advanced years leaves his nation to pursue a career in another country for the first time.
In terms of the player we have, we’ve illustrated him a few times.
He plays generally left side of defence, and is comfortable on either foot – he has a good range of passing on him, and is good in the air.
His sofascore rating put him at an solid 13th for defenders (with over 20 apps) overall in the entire Eredivisie, a score of 7.08.
He was 35th for tackles at 45, behind the leader at 109 – we admit those numbers aren’t much better than departed Connor Goldson, but the level of the Eredivisie is notably higher than the Scottish Premiership.
Interceptions? 21st, (of 20+ apps) with 32. He was, however, beaten outright for skill 24 times, placing him 23rd in the league. Not superb.
Propper is not, we’ll be honest, an outstanding defender, Rangers got him for a modest cost and Twente had no issue letting him go. He was their captain but clearly he wanted a change and they didn’t mind.
His strength? His long-ball distribution is good, he nails around one in every two (42%) he attempts, meaning Rangers intend to use his deep-lying long balls to effect.
This shows the purpose of Clement’s signing here – effectively a Goldson clone. Propper, unfortunately, isn’t much better as a brute-force stopper than Goldson was, and honestly plays much the same way – possession and long balls. Goldson, unfortunately, was actually better at these – 169 long balls which nailed it, 52% accuracy, better than Propper’s.
This may have been a bit of a panic signing really, there’s nothing about Propper which makes him clearly better than Goldson (or any other of Rangers’ defenders) aside the notion that he’s Dutch and has done it in the higher-level Eredivisie when Goldson only did it in the SPL. Balogun did it in the Bundesliga.
The hope is the manager and Nils Koppen have made a good call in bringing a guy who on paper doesn’t look particularly better than what we currently have.
Football isn’t played on paper, and we pin our hopes on that.