Always the…Bride? Cyriel Dessers and his identity problem at Rangers.

The sight of a frustrated Dessers following a few missed chances against Hearts was one Rangers fans are already very familiar with.

Dessers has had a mixed career at Rangers so far, to put it lightly. On paper his numbers are good: 54 Apps with 22 goals and 9 Assists. If someone offered those numbers when his transfer was announced, you'd have ripped their hand off, best goal return since Morelos in 19/20? Check. Consistently available across the whole season? Check. Scored against Celtic at Celtic park and had the winning brace in a cup semi? Check and check. 

But football isn't black and white. If you look at Dessers’ performance for Rangers across the season, it seriously ebbed and flowed. 

A tough first few months [15/3/3] (alongside the whole squad to be fair), a reasonable return to form under Clement initially[15/6/3], a fantastic 2 month spell from January onwards[10/7/1], culminating in a rough last few months when the rangers jersey seemed to weigh too heavily on the Nigerian striker’s shoulders[15/6/2]. 

If you ask any fan about Dessers they will mention his catalogue of big misses and how costly they were: Celtic away(lost 2-1), Ross County away (lost 3-2), Killie away (lost 1-0) and Motherwell at home (lost 2-1). 

This has all led to a big argument from fans this summer that the 29 year old should be sold and replaced with a serious goal scorer a la Shankland to fire us to the title. Given his age and expensive fee, I'm not against selling Dessers were a good offer to come in, that's part of a successful player trading model. 

C'est la vie?

“We will never win the league with ****** upfront” 

“He's not good enough to be a starting striker for a team that wants to win the title”

“He misses way too many chances in big games” 

“When he's not in good form, ****** spends his time on the periphery of games”

All lifted from Rangers fans tweets this summer and to be expected given the patchy form of the striker, right? Wrong. These are all sentiments expressed by Arsenal fans between 2012-2017 about Olivier Giroud. 

I want to explore Dessers time at Rangers through the lense of a comparison with Olivier Girouds time at Arsenal for a few reasons.

1. I've not seen anyone else make this comparison and I felt like it was perfect. 

2. Although every player is different, I think there are a lot of strong parallels with each striker and their time at each club.

3. There are lessons to be learned from Arsenal and the way they dealt with Giroud.

For anyone that doesn't know, Olivier Giroud signed for Arsenal in the summer of 2012 following a successful season as top scorer in Ligue 1 as his Montpellier side won the league. He had big shoes to fill as Robin Van Persie (37 goals all comps in 2011/12) was about to leave to join Man United. Below I've included his goal returns per season for Arsenal and I'll be referring to each as we discuss his time at Arsenal briefly and how it relates to Cyriel Dessers. 

Season	Apps	Goals	Assists	Mins per Goal
12/13	47	17	10	188
13/14	51	22	11	186
14/15	36	19	4	125
15/16	53	24	6	141
16/17	40	16	6	111
17/18 (left in Jan)	26	7	0	179

Giroud had an OK first season at Arsenal. No one expected him to match Van Persie’s goal return and indeed Arsenal had a bit of an identity crisis throughout the season with multiple players starting upfront at various times of the season. Lukas Podolski started the season upfront but they quickly realised he was more useful from the left side of midfield. Giroud had his spell as starting striker. Following the end of protracted contract talks, Theo Walcott spent a large part of the season starting upfront. 

This led to a bit of clamour from Arsenal fans for a big striker signing in the transfer window. Higuain gave Arsenal the run-around for most of the summer before signing for Napoli and they ended up signing Mesut Ozil to lighten the creative burden on Santi Cazorla with no other players coming in (aside from Yaya Sanogo and Emiliano Viviano [on loan]). 

Arsenal challenged for the title in 2013/14 but ultimately fell short. A large part of this shortcoming was attributed to Giroud being the starting striker for the full season. This led to much of the talk quoted above, even more vociferously than the previous summer. 

Now I believe that most fans were right, Arsenal couldn't win the title with Giroud as their number 1 striker. He was a decent striker, but didn't have the character in big games to make the difference. 

Number 2 is the new number 1

So far I've established that neither Dessers or Giroud are title-winning first-choice strikers. But what other connection do they have? I believe that just like Giroud, Dessers is almost the perfect second-choice striker for a team like Rangers. 

Giroud found himself as the second-choice striker at Arsenal in 2016/17 with an inspired Alexis Sanchez leading the line for most of the season. Suddenly his impact in games was much more noticeable, appearing off the bench in tight games to make the difference in the box or even see games out due to his aerial ability. When he was called upon to start he was fit and sharp and eager to repay the faith of the manager bringing him in to face (largely weaker) opponents. This is reflected by his minutes per goal from that season, by far his best during his Arsenal career.

It should also be noted that during Giroud’s third season at Arsenal, he spent time as second choice striker to Danny Welbeck. Unsurprisingly this is his 2nd best minutes per goal at Arsenal.

Even when Arsenal spent big and brought in Alexandre Lacazette to lead the line in 2017/18, it was Giroud who got the winner in the opening game of the season at home to Leicester, off the bench. 

You're my favourite deputy

I think that Rangers need to look at Dessers as a very able deputy to Danilo and (eventually) Igamane. This is someone who, much like Giroud, doesn't complain, gives 100% whenever he's on the park, and has a good goal scoring return against the lesser teams in the league. 

My hope is that a fresh Dessers impacting the game from the bench or taking a chance to start against lesser opposition would have a more positive impact on our title chances than selling him to potentially fund a better goal scorer to start over Danilo.

We have already seen evidence of this first hand, his best all round form for Rangers, in my opinion, was during January and February as mentioned earlier. During those months he didn’t start every game as Fabio Silva was preferred upfront in away games, it’s no surprise that Dessers scored a handful of goals from the bench during this spell, and when starting looked at his sharpest. 

His form then collapsed once Cortes was lost to injury and Fabio Silva was preferred as the starting left winger by Clement. By the end of the season Dessers once again looked leggy and lacked confidence in his game and the team suffered as a result. 

I’m not afraid to admit that I am a fan of Dessers as a person and I think he should be kept around the club, despite the criticism levelled at him across the season, I never saw him hide away. I think that’s the kind of character a title winning club needs. 

I briefly mentioned Igamane earlier, and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that Dessers attitude on the training ground would be a positive influence on the young Moroccan. 

The rumours of Dessers’ move to Greece have gone silent, and I believe he will be at the club for at least the first half of the season. If he does that as a 2nd choice striker, I believe we will see the best of Cyriel Dessers in a Rangers shirt and that can only be a good thing for everyone involved.