Motherwell legend Stephen Craigan feels Cyriel Dessers would not be setting the world alight at Fir Park if the £4.5 million striker had moved to Lanarkshire rather than Rangers over the summer.
The goal which gave Rangers all three points at home to Motherwell on Sunday afternoon – boos ringing around after yet another below-par home showing – felt like the footballing equivalent of slapping a roll of wallpaper on a wall beset with damp and fissures, and hoping it is enough to hide the damage.
Cyriel Dessers opened his Scottish Premiership account at the fifth time of asking.
And while his most fortuitous of strikes could be something of a floodgate-opening moment – not quite ‘one off the backside’ but near enough – Dessers’ all-round game did little to quell the fears that Mick Beale has signed a £4.5 million dud, stumbling over the ball as attacks broke down around him.
Cyriel Dessers scores Rangers’ winner vs Motherwell
“I am not too sure Motherwell fans would have been delighted if they signed Cyriel Dessers, watching his performances up to this point,” Well hero Stephen Craigan laughs on the BBC SportsSound podcast.
Dessers, once again, looked clumsy and cumbersome leading the line, the confidence and the ruthlessness that marked his 20-goal season at Feyenoord back in 2021/22 conspicuous by it’s absence.
And if the Belgian-born Nigeria international expected to be given the benefit of the doubt by the Ibrox public, the jeers that accompanied his half-hearted display against Livingston back in August not only brought the Honeymoon period to an early end, but floated the possibility of a rather bitter divorce if things don’t change fast.
‘He has to bare his teeth’
“We’ve still to see these new guys bare their teeth,” argues former Rangers manager Alex McLeish (Scottish Sun). “If Dessers comes back in (to Beale’s XI), should he show more physicality? Too right.
“You’ve got to be robust and impose yourself on your opponent, especially centre-forwards against defenders.
“Imagine what Ally McCoist and Mark Hateley did in the past. The Rangers boys must establish themselves to that kind of level. That’s the task ahead for them.
“With the likes of Dessers, he has to bare his teeth.”
