Rangers started their season on Thursday and the Scottish Premiership side managed to grab a two nil win over Macedonian side FC Shkupi at Ibrox in their opening Europa League fixture.

New Gers boss Steven Gerrard took positives from his side’s performance:

“There are a lot of positives to take from the game. We have won it, we got the clean sheet and I thought we defended really well.”

One thing Gerrard will be hoping for is that his forward players manage to become more ruthless as the season goes on.

In particular, Alfredo Morelos and Josh Windass weren’t at their best in front of goal and seemed to lack match sharpness (understandable given it was just their first competitive match).

Now I believe both will pick up when the domestic season begins and they’ll soon be back amongst the goals but when you look at the Rangers squad you feel that the new gaffer would still like to add an experienced hitman to his ranks.

In terms of out and out strikers, Colombian Morelos still looks to be the best within the squad. He’s still young, just turning twenty-two in the summer, and he has a lot of strengths within his game. But as we saw last season El Bufalo does go through lean spells.

Gerrard has brought in twenty-one year old forward Umar Sadiq on a season long loan from AS Roma. The Nigerian under-23 international enjoyed a loan spell at NAC Breda last term, scoring five goals in twelve Eredivisie games but he’s still pretty raw and might need time to find his feet in Scotland.

Zak Rudden did well when he came on in a recent friendly win over Bury but at eighteen years of age, you can’t imagine he’ll be used regularly in the first team next season.

The most experienced forward in the Gers squad is Eduardo Herrera. The twenty-nine year old Mexican wasn’t overly impressive in his debut season and it’s thought that the club are trying to offload the striker this summer.

So looking at it, you’ve got to believe that Rangers are a bit bare up-top and need an elder statesman that can help the youngsters throughout the upcoming campaign.

They’ve had it in recent seasons with Kenny Miller but with the veteran leaving the club under a cloud and now managing at Livingston there’s no longer an elder statesman to help lead the line.

During their preseason trip to Spain, Gerrard said it was an area they were looking at improving upon:

“When a legend goes out the door, and someone as good as Kenny Miller, whose been a goal scorer throughout his career, it’s a very difficult void to fill. Big shoes to fill.

“So it’s important that we try to get that one right. It is an area we’re looking at.”

On Thursday, you could see that the team lacked composure and possibly height in the frontline.

It’ll be interesting to see who Steven Gerrard brings in to give his side more experience in the forward positions.

Posted on July 14th, 2018 by scott
Filed under: Article