Ibrox View: Rangers ace Ianis Hagi must improve form, even after goal v Hamilton
It’s been a slow start to the season for Rangers playmaker Ianis Hagi.
The Romania international has struggled to recapture the kind of form that made hims such a hit at Ibrox last term since he arrived on a permanent transfer earlier this summer, and his stats reflect that.
So far this campaign, his shot accuracy has been 17.5% lower than Ryan Kent’s -despite his xG being 0.01 higher, as per Wyscout.
And we’ve seen the same thing pretty much uniformly across the board.
Passing accuracy, dribble success rate, total action success rate; Hagi trails his teammate in all of them.
At least on Saturday against Hamilton he managed to score his first goal of the season, even if it was a fairly simple one.
Hagi buried a tap-in from around six yards out after some highly suspect defending, but the chance was so nailed on that it had an xG of 0.71.
That means that you would expect him to score from that scenario more than seven out of 10 times.
Still, a goal is a goal, and the hope will be that it is the spark needed to really ignite the 21-year-old’s campaign.
If he is to kick on from this point onwards, however, it will take a lot more than being in the right place at the right time every now and again.
Even factoring in his goal, Saturday was another lacklustre display from the attacking midfielder.
Hagi completed just 33 actions out of an attempted 68 on Saturday, giving him a success rate of 49%.
Even by his fairly middling standards this term, that leaves him 7.6% below his average.
And the real issue is that the failures are coming in the areas of his game that make him such a threat when he is on form.
For example, Hagi managed just four attempted dribbles against the Accies, and just one of those was successful.
That gave him a success rate of 25%.
By contrast, last season he was averaging 5.39 dribbles per 90 minutes, with a completion rate of 57.9%.
Likewise, he failed to find a man with either of his attempted crosses, whereas last year he was putting in three deliveries per game and finding his man just under a quarter of the time.
Perhaps even more telling, however, is the fact that Hagi has put in just two successful crosses all season – and that includes the Europa League defeat to Bayer Leverkusen last month.
In short, he really needs to pick up the quality of his output.
A goal at the weekend is a good start, but Hagi must build on this or he’s going to find himself on the periphery of Steven Gerrard’s plans at Rangers.
In other Rangers news, Leon Balogun has started life in Glasgow brilliantly.