Official Rangers partner raves as under-fire Todd Cantwell hands ‘confidence booster’ to struggling Cyriel Dessers in Hibs thrashing
Todd Cantwell was “superb” in the build up to the fourth Rangers goal as Philippe Clement’s first game in charge ended in a thrashing of Hibs, according to Heart & Hand.
The official Rangers partner reacted on Twitter on 21 October as the English midfielder, who has come in for recent criticism from both Chris Sutton and Kris Boyd, exhibited his quality to hand struggling Cyriel Dessers a “confidence booster” on the scoresheet.
Cantwell, 25, cut a beautiful reverse pass into the box in the 80th minute to find his Nigerian international teammate, with Dessers rolling a much-needed goal into the far corner.
Heart & Hand wrote: “4-0 and it’s a confidence booster for Dessers after superb play from Cantwell.”
Perfect start
There’s a long way to go and the start to the season has been so poor that it would be wrong to get overexcited after one good result.
But there was much to be encouraged by to kick off the Clement era, so in terms of scoreline and some individual performances it was exactly what was called for after the slog of the Michael Beale’s final weeks in charge.
Abdallah Sima, arguably the only man outside of Jack Butland to have come out of the past month with any credit, was again the star as he surged forward to fire the opener in low, and netted a second after the break.
The irony for Rangers is that the best of the attacking recruits so far is the only one who isn’t a permanent member of the squad, but Nico Raskin is and fired in a long-range strike himself.
If Dessers, a £4.5million signing, can find some confidence and get scoring regularly it would arguably be much more useful for the Light Blues in the longer-term, so any goals for him are a major plus after a difficult start to life in Glasgow.
There was another injury, this time to Borna Barisic, to add to a worrying trend at Ibrox, so the win was far from perfect.
But in terms of improvements from recent weeks it was a big one so the first signs of Clement’s impact are positive.
In other Rangers news, the clubs hand may be forced in January with a “big offer” mooted for a star man.