Every player received pass marks on Friday night, as Rangers swept Hibernian aside 3-0 at Easter Road, but Scott Arfield is deserving of a special mention.
The 31-year-old received a lot of criticism over the early part of the season, and rightly so.
Most often playing in the attacking right slot, he looked well off the pace on a near-weekly basis, struggling to link up the play and to provide any attacking threat. Before his opener at Aberdeen at the beginning of the month, he had gone 22 games without a goal [Soccerbase].
However, of late, he’s looked a totally different player.
Shifted back into a more central midfield role, the Canada skipper has become more and more influential.
In what promised to be a tough fixture under the lights in Edinburgh, he was certainly one of the standout performers.
Strong in the tackle and much more accurate with his passing than in weeks gone by, he brought solidity to the middle of the park alongside Ryan Jack and Glen Kamara.
Perhaps ironically, he looks much more likely to affect the game in an attacking sense when playing in this deeper role, too.
It appears to be much more natural for Arfield to make late runs from the midfield with the intention of arriving late on the edge of the box. By comparison, when stuck out on the right side, he would often look static and uncomfortable.
He certainly impressed plenty of Bears both on social media and at the ground, with his name ringing around the away section in the closing stages.
Here’s a selection of reaction to his display from Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Aldolees1872/status/1208146174672343047
https://twitter.com/markforsyth2/status/1208146547915083777
