Clinton Nsiala has gone from impressing when he broke into the Rangers team to being bombed back to the fringes.
Amid a defensive crisis and the unavailability of the likes of John Souttar and Leon Balogun, the Frenchman finally got his chance with a start in the 1-1 draw with Dundee back in January.
Philippe Clement was impressed with Nsiala that day and the 21-year-old kept his place in the team for a run of games at centre half.
Teammates were also liking what they saw and Souttar branded his new partner ‘quality’ after they played together for the first time for a 4-0 thumping of Ross County.
However, as was perhaps inevitable with a youngster playing at centre half, the dip in form came and came quite spectacularly.
There were a couple of errors to allow St Mirren to score both their goals in their win at Gers’ home and then Nsiala was hooked in the first half at Kilmarnock after another struggle.
He missed out completely on Barry Ferguson’s matchday squad for Motherwell at the weekend.
Colin Hendry gives advice to Rangers’ Nsiala
As a centre-back who first broke into the Dundee team at 18, before going on to play for Rangers as well as the likes of Blackburn, Manchester City and Scotland, Colin Hendry is perfectly placed to offer some advice.
In a press conference for Premier Sports, he told Nsiala: “It’s a fishbowl that everybody is looking, everybody is analysing and more or less strips you down. With modern football, social media, so many phones and cameras being at games, you can pick out the minutest of details in relation to how a player plays.
“What he’s really got to do is just go back to basics. As raw and inexperienced as he is, you’ve still got to work on your basics.
“You’ve just to go back to basics, keep it simple. Certainly as a central defender, because the game comes to you anyway.
“Your opponent you’re playing against, you need to mark and shadow every move he makes in relation to where the ball is.”
Barry Ferguson’s Nsiala explanation
After subbing the young defender at Kilmarnock, Ferguson said: “At times, during the game when things aren’t going well, you have to make tough decisions.
“Clinton is young. He will recover from it. But I just felt we had to make the change and obviously it worked out pretty well.
“Then, we started to control the game, probably relaxed a wee bit. I thought we were a bit tense [at the start].
