Like most Rangers fans and groups, Ibrox Noise welcomes Olwethu Makhanya to Govan. We will see how the new defender gets on. However, Rangers have not signed a defender with such poor metrics for quite some time. We know that football is a numbers based business these days. Having explored the new boy’s numbers, we are surprised that Derek McInnes’ men chose to bring him in for £3M.
Makhanya’s MLS statistics cause concern
Last season, of course, Makhanya played for Philadelphia Union in MLS. While The Athletic called him one of MLS’s best defenders, Ibrox Noise’s research does not support that claim.
We examined various statistics for interceptions, tackles, aerial win percentages, ground duel percentages and total win percentages. We also checked dribbles past, clearances and basically every single statistic that matters to a defender.
The highest statistic that Makhanya excelled at among defenders in the MLS was tackles, with 30, at 10th in the league. Interceptions he was 42nd with 16, clearances he was 41st with 60, and blocked shots he was 68th with 6. These are not vintage numbers.
During his 13 MLS appearances last season for Philadelphia Union, Makhanya’s highest position for any single defensive attribute was 10th. He could not better that for anything.
Now, of course, that position of 10th only includes defenders. This is us trying to find areas in which he excelled with a lower sample of players.
We could find absolutely none. Therefore, we are a little concerned about what the club saw that persuaded Rangers to bring this lad in.
SofaScore and WhoScored numbers agree
Initially, those were SofaScore statistics. Those were the numbers that SofaScore offered.
Therefore, we wanted to be fair to the lad and tried WhoScored. Unfortunately for him, the numbers mostly matched. They were only marginally better, but not by much.
In simple terms, we cannot find a single reason why we have signed this boy.
An Ibrox Noise regular noted that Luke Graham recently produced a standout performance for Stoke against Everton. Rangers received encouragement to move for the left sided CB but did not.
Stoke got him for only £2M and he excelled against a Premier League side. Meanwhile, Makhanya seems to have struggled in MLS.
We are not quite sure where the praise and reputation surrounding the boy have come from. We can only hope that the club sees something that we do not. The Athletic described him as one of the MLS’ best stoppers. Where that comes from we’re not sure. Where the praise for his displays comes from in the comments around this story we’re not sure.
We are not absolute experts, but we have done some digging and crunched the numbers. They are not flattering. Far from it.
Overall rating offers little encouragement
Indeed, Makhanya’s overall rating was 6.65. This is as bang average as it gets. He finished miles behind the league’s best defenders at that level.
Of course, Lionel Messi achieved by far the highest overall score at around 8.6. However, that is a completely different level on which Makhanya is not exactly competing.
When it comes to pure defenders, he was still way down the list. Miles down.
We are definitely concerned about his ability. We really do wonder what supports the claim that he is one of the league’s best defenders.
Ranking around 97th at best among 136 defenders really does not sound convincing to us.
McInnes must prove the numbers wrong
We do not want to be deliberately negative. We are far from it.
We want the lad to succeed because, of course, he is now a Rangers man. We will always bow to Derek McInnes’ judgement when it comes to signings.
We just wonder why Rangers brought in a right footed defender rather than another lefty, which we needed.
However, time will tell whether our numbers are miles off and Derek McInnes was bang on to bring this guy in.
We certainly hope that is the case.