It’s never easy comparing individual players to those of the past especially those that have played for Rangers and, in particular, James Tavernier.
As the highest-scoring defender in British football history, you would think that as a Hall of Fame legend, that fans would be unanimous on his place in our club’s illustrious history.
Apparently not as a debate on X demonstrated perfectly, not every Rangers fan is a James Tavernier fan too.
Is Rangers lack of success James Tavernier’s fault?
Take the penalties away and the skipper has nine goals and 10 assists for the season, ridiculous for a defender.
If you add the spot-kicks, those numbers go to 24 and 10.
We’ve not had forwards at Ibrox hit those numbers since Nikica Jelavic or, perhaps, Alfredo Morelos at his peak.
In total, he now has 125 goals and 127 assists in his 452 appearances since moving to Ibrox.
Bearing in mind, a lot of the time, he wasn’t exactly playing with prolific forwards – you could argue that is still the case.
As we’ve seen recently though, it’s at the other end where he is currently under scrutiny.
Roasted by Daizen Maeda in the Old Firm and guilty against Ross County, the 32-year old’s defensive frailties are once again up for debate.
This is Ibrox contributor and analyst John Walker has made a good point on social media, how would James Tavernier cope if placed in Rangers teams of the past?
Comparing the current captain to Alec Cleland, Sergio Porrini, Kevin Muscat, Maurice Ross, Kirk Broadfoot and Steven Whittaker, Walker made a valid point about how Tavernier’s trophy haul would be considerably higher and the teams from each era wouldn’t be weaker.
I’d make an argument about Porrini, as a Champions League and Serie A winner, being a better player but he was totally different stylistically.
In rebuttal, Stevie Clifford of the Four Lads Had a Dream podcast replied:
“Problem is John, when he turns in the level of performance he has in the last few weeks then people will point to those names and (rightly) say none of them stunk the place out like Tav is now crossing, passing, positioning, set plays, he was absolutely awful yesterday.
“Because this is what he does. It’s what they all do.”
All the players mentioned by Walker had bad games for Rangers, some more than most.
If a player plays 450 times for Rangers, there will always be more examples of negativity than others.
Wait until you hear about some of the mistakes that Gary Stevens made, arguably, Rangers best ever right-back.
Why is Tavernier held to such a high standard?
The problem is, Tavernier is held almost personally responsible for us winning trophies, which is just daft.
He played a huge role in us getting to the Europa League final as top goalscorer, but someone had to pass the ball to him to score the key goals.
Football is much more nuanced than the success or failure of a team being down to one player.
Managers for a start.
Since 2016, how many really good ones have we had who haven’t made massive mistakes in recruitment, tactics or team selections?
We’ve had almost no consistency of success and that isn’t just down to Tavernier purely because he’s been here the longest.
Walker is right, he could easily have played in any of our best teams and not looked out of place.
Should he be playing better? Yes, but he’s not the only one.
