Ryan Kent has a lot of work to do to justify the faith shown in him by Rangers and Steven Gerrard after a poor display against Bayer Leverkusen.
The club forked out £7.5m to sign the 23-year-old from Liverpool at the end of the summer transfer window [Sky Sports], but rather than being the star man in Thursday night’s Europa League Last 16 tie, he received the lowest WhoScored rating of any Gers starter, with 6.01.
It was Kent who came up with the winner at Ross County last weekend with a heavily deflected shot from the right side of the box, while he also scored the winner in the away leg of the Europa League Round of 32 against Braga.
However, while he’s surpassed his goals tally from the 2018/19 season, he hasn’t been the major influence many Bears hoped he would be.
That trend is shown by his lack of an assist in the Scottish Premiership, despite making 20 appearances on the wing.
Against Leverkusen on Thursday night, it seemed that the majority of times he became involved in an attack, the move broke down. Obviously, wingers are supposed to be creative and with that, there’s always an element of risk to their play.
Yet, Kent rarely looked like beating his man, never mind producing a telling cross or shot and his individual stats paint a sorry tale.
Kent had one effort in the game which failed to hit the target, while he contributed no key passes, recorded a passing accuracy of 76.9%, picked up a booking and finished with an overall rating of just 6.01 [WhoScored].
Naturally, it’s not just his fault that Rangers lost to a well-oiled machine in Peter Bosz’s Leverkusen.
But it’s not the first time the winger’s performance has been nowhere near where it needs to be to justify being the club’s second most expensive ever signing.
Rangers have shown a lot of faith in him, while Steven Gerrard has continued to pick him and shield him from criticism [Daily Mail].
It now looks like we’re set for an extended break from football, but when the games do eventually return, Kent must do better.
