‘Mad’… Andy Halliday shares the Rangers stat he noticed that has left him stunned

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Andy Halliday couldn’t believe what he was reading when he stumbled upon a Rangers goal stat after Saturday’s win over Livingston.

Philippe Clement has transformed the first-team squad into a winning machine following the sacking of Michael Beale.

But it was the latter who led the summer recruitment before the current campaign and certainly until Clement came along, it was certain that Beale failed to sign a striker capable of scoring consistently in the Scottish Premiership.

Kyogo is Celtic’s go-to for regular goals – even if he’s having a below par campaign thus far – and Hearts and Aberdeen have the red-hot Lawrence Shankland and the classy Bojan Miovski respectively.

This is no slight on Cyriel Dessers because he is now proving to be a player who can chip in with goals fairly regularly after initially struggling under Beale’s stewardship.

The Nigerian now has 12 goals in 34 games this season [Soccerbase] – six of those coming in his previous 11 appearances – but he’s not as ruthless as the three aforementioned players.

Rangers’ share of goals this season have been spread out more evenly amongst the squad and Philippe Clement has been on record saying he doesn’t care who does the business in front of goal – as long as they go in.

But former Rangers midfielder Halliday, who signed for Motherwell in January from Hearts, can’t believe that the Ibrox giants only have four players with five or more goals this season so far.

Andy Halliday on ‘mad’ Rangers statistic

Halliday shared the stat on the Open Goal podcast recently and just can’t get his head around the fact that it’s February and Rangers don’t have more players on at least five goals scored individually.

The 32-year-old revealed: “I seen a stat yesterday which I thought was mad. We’re in February but Rangers have only got four players in their squad who have scored five goals or more (this season).

“And two of them are injured, (Abdallah) Sima and Danilo. They are both out and the only other two are (Cyriel) Dessers and Tav (James Tavernier).

“Five goals in February, that’s not a lot is it?”

Halliday is clearly stunned by the statistic but really, is it a big deal? Sure, it would be nice to see more players on more goals but it’s a team game at the end of the day.

Clement bangs on about that most weeks and isn’t bothered about who has this number of goals or that figure of assists to their names.

And Rangers don’t have a goal-scoring problem anymore. Question were asked under Michael Beale’s start to the season where the goals would come from but Clement is showing that goals can be shared across the team without much drama.

Rangers are the second-highest scorers in the league and can go level on points with Celtic tonight against Aberdeen. So Halliday’s statistic isn’t as significant as he’s making it out to be.