Jermain Defoe nearly went through a hugely successful career without winning silverware until he turned up at Rangers and played a key role in winning the Scottish Premiership under Steven Gerrard.
Now retired from playing, the diminutive striker left Ibrox with 32 goals and 10 assists in 74 games, will always be welcome back and cemented himself as a fans’ favourite in the process.
A far cry from Cyriel Dessers, who despite scoring his tenth goal of the season in Rangers win over Hearts, continues to frustrate.
Cyriel Dessers out performing Jermain Defoe for Rangers
Perception is everything in a world and industry obsessed with statistics as the big Nigeria international ticks the boxes in terms of numbers, but not in terms of appearance.
Against Hearts, Dessers touched the ball just 17 times. For context, Danilo only played 15 minutes and touched it 10 times.
On paper, Dessers is doing his job. In 74 appearances, the 29-year old has scored 32 goals and has 12 assists.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that he has produced more goal contributions than Defoe in exactly the same number of games.
Other than the physical differences, there is so much more to that specific set of statistics than meet the eye.
For a start, Defoe made most of his appearances for Rangers off the bench whilst Dessers is practically starting every game.
Then there is what he brings to the team. Defoe wouldn’t score every chance he was presented with, but fans had faith in him to score when it mattered.
Even towards the end of his time at the club, Defoe still had the speed to get away from defenders and rarely did he not, at least, get a shot away.
What is Clement’s blindspot with Dessers?
Clement isn’t doing himself any favours just now with some of his team selections, substitutions as well as his management/defence of Dessers which leaves a lot to be desired.
Fans don’t expect the Gers boss to come out and criticise the Rangers No.9, but there has to be a realisation that the club need to see a lot more from a player who cost £4.5m and is one of the highest earners on the wage bill.
This is what Clement said about Dessers after the narrow win over Hearts:
“He’s just somebody who gives everything for the team, does everything to score goals but to work hard also for the team. But he doesn’t score every game.
“I think a striker who scores every game for Rangers, he will not stay long at Rangers also.
“He’s scored already quite an amount of goals this season. Could he have scored more? Yes. Are we working on that? Also yes.
“If you see one year ago where he was at this moment, I think I came in around one year ago, I think he scored three goals in that period.
“He scored already much more in this period until now, this season and in the period also from last season.
“So he’s taking steps in that way and he scored a lot of important goals. So he needs to continue that way.”
It isn’t just about the number of goals he has scored or chances he has missed, it is about the number of attacks that break down with the ball at his feet or good opportunities that get squandered without a shot even being made.
The sort of thing that never happened on Defoe’s watch.
As far as comparisons go, the numbers are where it ends between two strikers who couldn’t be more different or held in such varied regard by Rangers fans.
