Not signing a number nine in the January window.

Jock Battle Fever Wallace said:
Up there with the decision not to sign Hartson in sheer stupidity and I don't like admitting that as I despise that big helmet now. People on here argued that Shankland couldn't play in our system and that we couldn't afford him? Well those arguments now look rather silly.
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Dessers has scored winning goals since the transfer window ending. The big problem is no one else scoring apart from the rb and a defence unable to defend.
 
Jock Battle Fever Wallace said:
If you think Dessers is the answer.....we'll leave it there mate.
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Where did I say Dessers was the answer?
We had f all money to spend in the winter break. Took a gamble on a Silva to play number 9, Diomande ro help the midfield and Cortes to help out wide.
There was no way of knowing that Sima would then get injured and then Cortes.
 
strathavenbear said:
Where did I say Dessers was the answer?
We had f all money to spend in the winter break. Took a gamble on a Silva to play number 9, Diomande ro help the midfield and Cortes to help out wide.
There was no way of knowing that Sima would then get injured and then Cortes.
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You quoted Dessers' numbers so I took from that that you were saying you were happy with him as our number 9 and would keep him there next season? No?
We had no money? Today we handed the bheast the champions league pot worth probably tens of millions? How much will that cost us going forward? A Rangers supporter is Scotland's player of the year and top scorer. He has scored winning goals for his team against the Saville 11 and made no attempt to hide his love of the Rangers....but he doesn't play for Rangers. But we have Cyriel Dessers..come on.
 
Rangerstillidie said:
For all he’s taken stick Dessers has largely continued scoring. He’s not the biggest issue. A centre forward isn’t what’s killed us. Creativity and lack of options wide and in CM have killed us.
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There’s a number of factors why we’ve not won the league I agree. For Clement to take it this far has surprised me.

In my opinion if we had 2 capable centre half’s we woulda won the league. Even how poor we are in final 3rd I think we still had enough to beat the SPL dross if we coulda defended better.

To me that’s the biggest factor.
 
A complete lack of energy and fighting spirit is what we lack not a No9.

Dessers' return has been fine.
It would be even better with players with a will to win surrounding him.

We have a team of gutless, lethargic wage thieves.
 
Captain_Buns said:
Clement is on record as saying we had absolutely zero to spend.

Nada

Zilch

What were they supposed to do? Were there any 9’s going for free that joined another club & scored for fun that we missed out on?
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Couldn't we have done a loan to buy with a actual prolific striker
 
Jock Battle Fever Wallace said:
You quoted Dessers' numbers so I took from that that you were saying you were happy with him as our number 9 and would keep him there next season? No?
We had no money? Today we handed the bheast the champions league pot worth probably tens of millions? How much will that cost us going forward? A Rangers supporter is Scotland's player of the year and top scorer. He has scored winning goals for his team against the Saville 11 and made no attempt to hide his love of the Rangers....but he doesn't play for Rangers. But we have Cyriel Dessers..come on.
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That Rangers supporter hasn't scored a goal from open play for months and is only top scorer now through penalties which he wouldn't take for us. In that time Dessers has scored 8. Dessers isn't the answer, but Shankland is so far from it too.

Shankland has only scored more than 12 goals in top flight season this season from open play and has never done before so, and that's due to a 5 month purple patch that is long gone.

We handed the beasts the title due to the defense being an absolute bombscare to a man, a midfield with no battle, quality or creativity at all. And a lack of wingers. Dessers took his only chance.
 
Zandermc said:
A number 9 isn’t the issue. Dessers has missed a lot of sitters but his goal return has actually been decent. The issue is we have nobody anywhere else on the park who can chip in with goals. Tavernier only chips in because he’s our set piece specialist.
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Tavernier only chips in with set pieces WTF i must have missed all those headers and shots in Europe and against the beggars .
 
Captain_Buns said:
Clement is on record as saying we had absolutely zero to spend.

Nada

Zilch

What were they supposed to do? Were there any 9’s going for free that joined another club & scored for fun that we missed out on?
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So the situation is unlikely to be any different in the Summer?

Yet we are supposed to overcome that lot with zero spend and swapping out a whole load of players?
 
We need a striker yes but Shankland would be suffering with this team. With our serious lack of pace the midfield gets stretched too easy and leave huge gaps for teams to play in and the main striker often has to drop with back to goal to pick up the ball as we play from so deep and also make it easy for teams to get back into shape when we attack. We create so little clear chances at times and very few contributions outside Dessers and Tav.
 
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Highway Star said:
Dessers scored our winner at St Mirren, 2 at Hampden and again today.
4 goals in the last 4 games.

He's currently got 21 goals this season.

That's a good return for a striker and way better than anyone at the piggery.
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Prior to to semi final, he had 1 goal in 9 games, as his, and our, form fell off a cliff.

He's played more minutes than any Rangers striker in recent memory.

His overall play is woeful. He can't hold it up, can't bring others into the game, can't occupy defenders. We binned Colak because all he offered was goals. All Dessers offers is goals at a much lesser rate.

He's not good enough, whichever way you want to dress it up.
 
Wee Dick's Hairnet said:
Could that turn out to be one of the costliest decisions we will ever make or not make as it goes?
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Not unless he was going to stop all the defensive howlers.

You cant win games with things like the Tav first min at Ibrox, Lundstram, Ross County defending, Goldson OG at Benfica.

Against Killie you can get away with a Lundstram handball and a Tav OG, in big games it knocks you out of Europe and loses you leagues.
 
Wee Dick's Hairnet said:
Could that turn out to be one of the costliest decisions we will ever make or not make as it goes?
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That was a huge gamble that didn't pay off had we brought in Shankland or Miovski I believe we'd have won the league either would've cost around £5m and got us around £60m in champions league money.
 
club175 said:
You could put any striker in the world up front and it wouldn’t make a difference. The midfield is our problem and has been for years. How many goals and assists have Lawrence, lundstram, diomande etc scored between them this season?
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Our entire midfield combined has fewer goals and assists than O'Riley. That stat alone goes a long way to explaining why the league table looks the way it does.
 
PMB1872 said:
Quite possibly but we were skint at the time clearly.
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We still brought in 3 high value players. poets brought in a Norwich reserve on loan to at least support the diver up front.

It was and remains utterly astonishing our only option was Dessers
 
The rest of the team is so dysfunctional I'm not convinced this would have made any difference in the end.

Would it have stopped us chucking 3 goals in against Ross County or getting run over in the middle of the pitch at Parkhead?
 
Decent striker brought in Jan and we could have got beat yesterday and probably still won the league.

The games we dropped (not including the OF games) we created multiple chances, didn't take them before the inevitable happened.
 
Highway Star said:
Like what?

Is always fit and available, has the best goals to minutes record out of the strikers in our league this season.
Even today, he scored the one chance that came his way and rarely gave away posession and linked the play whenever he could.

He's quick, works hard and has given Vickers real problems in the last 2 old firm games.

He's far from perfect, but it's been a long time since we had a near perfect striker.
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He is not quick. Rarely keeps the ball and passes to a Rangers player - twice yesterday.

Vickers could have played in his slippers!
 
Our midfield is where we are continually over run. We need better players, but why we don’t have a plan to nullify O’Riley just baffles me.
 
Today didn’t cost us the league - getting 2 points out of nine v Motherwell, Ross County and Dundee did that.

A no 9 wouldn’t have changed those games, it was our midfield and defence
 
Redding over this and it's glaringly obvious, there hasn't been an outfield player defensively or a player in the middle of the park who has pass marks this season.

Dessers has played well up front and better than we give him credit for.

Apart from Sterling, there's been zero outfield player to get excited about.

It's always been in spurts. Cortes, Sima, Cantwell, Diomande. There hasn't been one who's did well over a long period, either due to injuries or just lack of form. That's terrible.
 
Let's be brutally honest here. Dessers is not a good number 9.

He isn't quick and can't go in behind.

He isn't strong and can't take the ball in and.bring others into play.

He isn't a good finisher and needs 4 or 5 gilt-edged chances for every 1 he scores.

He doesn't press well, and is generally a spectator when we're not in possession.

And he's always offside.

He may have scored 21 goals but his general all round play is dreadful and if he's just going to be a goalscorer and nothing more, then he needs to find the net with far more regularity.

He's not good enough for a team that wants to win the title, and you can bet his wages are too high to be a third choice striker.
 
TPP said:
We still brought in 3 high value players. poets brought in a Norwich reserve on loan to at least support the diver up front.

It was and remains utterly astonishing our only option was Dessers
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That for me is the point. I wasn't looking to replace Dessers in January. What we needed, especially after Sima's injury, was somebody who could come in and add at least around ten goals and give us the opportunity to rest Dessers.

I guess you can say we tried to add goals via Silva and Cortes and got unlucky. But Cortes was never going to be direct backup to Dessers. And Silva, I don't know, I just feel like a lot of us knew how this would go and I don't know what the club expected to happen.
 
Trigga34 said:
We needed more than a 9 to fair we have shite all over the place
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Of course we did. Ravaged by injuries and our weakest position had been wide forward, not striker. Too many on here are desperate to be proved right.
 
Halaand would struggle to score in this team. The midfield is completely flat, trying to cover for our defensive frailties and too afraid to get beyond the half way line. Tav and Borna’s crossing was found out 4 years ago yet we still try and persist with getting it wide to them and hoping for the best. Cantwell is only a good player in his own head and if his ability matched his Tiktoking then he would maybe manage a few defense splitting passes but he doesn’t. Our only genuine quality came from Cortes and Sima who are both out injured. Silva gets tripped up by his own feet, Lawrence is the only player I’ve ever known who was so mediocre yet turned into Messi the longer he was out. Wright is not even SPFL quality far less Rangers quality. Lundstram has been stinking the place out for years, Matondo had pace but offers zero other qualities, McAusland would have been playing for Kili or Livingstone were it not for our injury crisis earlier this season and Roofe has only played in 59 games in FOUR YEARS! Added to that we start every game needing to score 2 or 3 because the shitebags at the back will concede at least one. We have a lot of problems but a number 9 is not the biggest.
 
Even if we had signed a striker, all we'd have been doing is hoping they'd bail us out a hole and paper over the cracks. We are in truth is a very poor football team.
 
GR3RFC said:
The rest of the team is so dysfunctional I'm not convinced this would have made any difference in the end.

Would it have stopped us chucking 3 goals in against Ross County or getting run over in the middle of the pitch at Parkhead?
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Dessers missed ridiculous sitters against Ross county. It should have been over by halftime instead of going in 1-0 up.

Countless other games and examples. Look at Motherwell at home.
 
Doesn’t matter who we our up front. They don’t get any service from the wings or the midfield. They are mostly isolated up front and spend a large part of the game chasing the ball.
For all Dessers faults the first ball into the box he put away then we just stopped it. Anyone could see they are suspect in the middle of defence but we didn’t throw a single ball in.
We need more goals from other players. Bring any striker in and depend on his goals alone we’ll struggle again and again.
 
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