Glasgow Rangers have struggled to score goals in the Scottish Premiership under Russell Martin so far this season, with three goals scored in five matches.
Only Aberdeen, who have failed to score any goals in their four outings in the division, have scored fewer goals than the Light Blues, which speaks to how impotent they have been in the final third in the opening weeks of the campaign.
It is not good enough, hence why the Gers have not picked up a single win yet, and Martin must find a way to get his strikers firing in front of goal if he wants to turn his fortunes around at Ibrox.
How the strikers have performed for Rangers this season
None of the club’s centre-forward options have got off the mark in the Premiership so far this season for the Light Blues, which is a cause for concern.
Bojan Miovski
0.55
0
Danilo
0.5
0
Cyriel Dessers
0.0
0
Youssef Chermiti
0.0
0
As you can see in the table above, only Bojan Miovski and Danilo have accrued any xG, as Dessers did not before his exit, and Chermiti has only had a cameo against Hearts so far.
This suggests that Rangers need to create more for their strikers, or that the strikers need to start making better runs, because they do not have a reliable goalscorer at the moment.
Given their lack of potency up front, Rangers may still regret the fact that Michael Beale and the club allowed Alfredo Morelos to move on from Ibrox on a free transfer.
Rangers fumbled their own Harry Kane
Back in 2019, former Light Blues striker Jermaine Defoe compared the Colombia international to his former teammate Harry Kane, who went on to become Tottenham Hotspur and England’s all-time top scorer, with 280 goals for Spurs and 74 for England, per Transfermarkt.
Defoe told the Daily Record: “I remember at Tottenham, when we had Harry Kane as a youngster, he went out on loan to different clubs. I remember saying to one of the players that I believed he should play more and that, at some point, he would go on to score a lot of goals for this football club.
“What he has done is unbelievable and Alfredo’s got that. He’s a goalscorer. When you’re a goalscorer, you score goals at any level in any league.”
Morelos certainly was a goalscorer. The prolific forward scored 30 goals in 48 matches in the 2018/19 campaign, per Transfermarkt, which led to that comparison to Kane from Defoe, and rightly so after that incredible return.
He went on to score 124 goals and provide 67 assists in 269 appearances in all competitions for Rangers, per Transfermarkt. This shows that he was consistently reliable in front of goal for the Scottish giants.
Morelos, whose physicality was hailed by former boss Steven Gerrard, recorded 12 goals and seven assists in all competitions during the 2022/23 campaign, which turned out to be his final season at the club.
The Colombian number nine’s contract at Ibrox expired in the summer 2023 and Beale, who was the manager at the time, did not offer him a new contract at the club.
Beale decided to go in a different direction with the striker department at the club, signing Sam Lammers, Danilo, and Dessers after releasing Morelos, who was the club’s own version of Kane.
Two years on, Lammers and Dessers have been sold by Rangers and Danilo currently finds himself behind Miovski and Chermiti in the pecking order to be the first-choice number nine at Ibrox.
This suggests that Beale had a howler by deciding not to attempt to convince Morelos to stay at Ibrox because he was a proven goalscorer who had shown that he could score goals at an impressive rate for the Gers in Scotland.
Instead, the manager released a pure goalscorer, who was like Kane, and went with a clutch of strikers who failed to bring success, with no league titles won, back to Ibrox in the last two years.