Ibrox View: Rangers 23y/o once considered ‘world beater’ surely destined for exit this summer
RANGERS OPINION
When Jordan Rossiter signed for Rangers, it could well have proved to be an inspired piece of business.
The midfielder, now 23, joined the Gers from Liverpool on a free transfer in 2016 after failing to make his mark on the first team picture at Anfield.
Factor in the arrival of Kop legend Steven Gerrard a couple of years later, and it’s not particularly hard to envisage an alternate reality where the Englishman really kicked on and finally made good on his potential.
For an idea of just how promising that potential was, you need only look at a recent report from Football Insider, which suggests that his old club saw him as a future “world beater”, and once viewed him with the same kind of regard that Trent Alexander-Arnold was given just prior to his own first team breakthrough.
Alas, Rossiter has not reached anything even remotely close to that kind of status in the senior game, and has spent this past season on loan at League One outfit Fleetwood Town.
His contract at Ibrox expires at the end of the season, and there is little to suggest that he has done enough during his stint away from Glasgow to inspire club chiefs to hand him a new deal.
So far this season, he has averaged 37.68 passes per game at a completion rate of 79.8%, as per Wyscout.
As a point of reference, Ryan Jack has averaged 71.29 passes per game at a completion rate of 90.1%.
Similarly, Rossiter has made 10.2% fewer ball recoveries in his own half this season than Jack, and has a total action success rate of 62% – 15.4% lower than the Ibrox mainstay’s.
That’s not to say that Rossiter is a bad player by any means, but the reality is that if he were to make an impact at Ibrox he would have to displace the likes of Jack first.
Evidently, that’s not going to happen, and as such, you have to fear that his time in Scotland is almost certain to come to a rather inauspicious end in the very near future.
In other Rangers news, Ally McCoist is bang on, something ‘absolutely stinks’ at Ibrox right now.