Former Rangers star Craig Moore believes one Ibrox winger can be a ‘dangerous’ option for Philippe Clement this season.
Rabbi Matondo is the man in question, who has been enduring a very stop-start season for Rangers mainly as a result of injury.
The 23-year-old missed a chunk of games between September and November and was sporadically reintroduced to the Clement’s team across the busy festive period.
Matondo was signed for £2.5m from Schalke 04 by Giovanni van Bronckhorst in the summer of 2022 and he’s probably been one of the more bipolar signings in recent memory.
The Welshman has pace to burn and can be really effective in getting behind opposition defences. He has the ability to beat a full-back on occasion but could definitely work on doing that more often, as well as his finishing.
Funnily enough, that’s exactly what Matondo was fine-tuning across the winter break and Clement understands too that area of his game needs developing.
Craig Moore on Rabbi Matondo
Signs of improvement were evident in that regard against FC Copenhagen on Tuesday when he scored the opening goal in the Ibrox friendly and Moore was complimentary of the finish when speaking on The Go Radio Football Show recently.
Craig Moore took the game in and was asked for his thoughts on Matondo. He thinks the winger can be a threat for Rangers albeit needing to be more consistent in his performances when given the chance to shine by Clement, which will be more often now given Abdallah Sima is at AFCON.
Moore said: “It was a very good goal and I’ll tell you, he missed a sitter straight before it. He could have just dinked it over the goalkeeper, it looked like quite a comfortable finish.
“But it was probably within a couple of minutes of that (Leon) Balogun wins it in a good area, Matondo is nice and positive, gets on the half turn and away he goes driving at defenders.
“As a defender I hated to see that, but it was a really good finish. His pace and when is confidence is high, Rabbi Matondo is a very dangerous player.
“The debate around him at this moment in time is that he’s been in and out and his consistency with injuries and also therefore performance. But when he’s got that confidence, he can be a very, very dangerous player. He’s not been able to keep that going for long enough.”
