Philippe Clement arrived at Rangers and quickly realised that he was desperately short of one particular type of player.
The recruitment carried out by Michael Beale saw £21m spent and yet there were no new wingers signed to replace the departures of Ryan Kent and Fashion Sakala from the squad.
Abdallah Sima started off centrally until it became obvious that he was going to be more effective drifting inside off the left, but he was never going to be the type of player who would carry the ball 30-40 yards for Rangers and create chances for others.
Vaclav Cerny outguns Rangers summer wing targets
Rangers tried to rectify the issue over the last two transfer windows, Oscar Cortes has struggled to hit double figures in the 10 months he has been at the club in terms of games and Vaclav Cerny was under pressure until his fine display against St Johnstone.
But how does the Czech winger compare to a target who openly admitted that Rangers made him an offer and another who they had a bid rejected for?
Available for a price of around £3m, Couhaib Driouech had some big clubs chasing his signature, there was always going to be one winner though:
“Rangers, Sevilla and Sporting are absolutely beautiful clubs, but I wanted to go to PSV.”
Driouech has started well for PSV with two goals and an assist in five Eredivisie appearances, not that he has been rewarded though with only 100 minutes to his name.
That knockback was early on in the transfer window, the one for Morgan Whittaker happened much later when a surprise bid, reported to be around the £7m mark was turned down by Wayne Rooney and Plymouth.
Whittaker just scored his second goal of the season with a dramatic, last-gasp winner over Blackburn Rovers.
On every metric for a winger, Cerny is comfortably ahead of Whittaker despite being out of sorts in recent weeks, according to Data MB with Driouech not playing enough league minutes to register.
What it shows is that, what the eyes see, doesn’t tell the full story.
Cerny proving former Rangers star wrong
Vaclav Cerny is contributing for Rangers, even if Andy Halliday isn’t so sure:
“The way Hibs set up in the first-half, to frustrate Rangers, you need someone who can beat someone in a one-v-one.
“Cerny has got a lovely left foot, but he’s always wanting to come in onto that left foot. He’s wanting to thread passes, he’s wanting to cross it.
“[Rangers have] a lack of pace or athleticism. And those are the kind of games where [you need that].”
With a goal or an assist every 95 minutes in the league, Cerny is getting the numbers that Rangers need, what he needs to do now, is reach a higher level of consistency in terms of performance.
Both of Cerny’s goals against St Johnstone saw him beat players in one-v-one situations going onto his left and then onto his right foot.
On paper, Rangers had a frustrating summer and the loss of Cortes has been a blow, a problem alleviated by the return of Ianis Hagi and Nedim Bajrami.
All Clement needs now is for Cerny to post more displays like his one against St Johnstone to put the summer disappointments firmly to bed.
