Cyriel Dessers is a player who will always divide opinion even if he has managed to fire Rangers to another cup final.
The 29-year old arrived for a reported £4.5m plus add-ons from Cremonese in a deal that raised more than a few eyebrows.
Better strikers than Cyriel Dessers haven’t scored as many goals for Rangers in their first season, but there is one statistic that is probably why he gets the grief that he does.
READ MORE: Who is Cyriel Dessers? Meet the Rangers striker who went from zero to hero
Cyriel Dessers has a chance to become a Rangers hero
Every striker misses chances.
The best to wear the famous number nine jersey in front of a packed Ibrox made more than their fair share of howlers on their way to success.
With 20 goals and 8 assists for the season including internationals, Dessers has had a solid first season, despite a difficult start that he is fully aware of:
“It’s important to close out the noise, even after a few months, or for a few guys a couple of years, we have the experience of that.
“You have to stay focused, in these weeks you have to block out the noise.
“At the start I think it got to me. That’s something I learned from as well. Now I have everything in line, in my head as well.
“When there’s noise now I can shut it out and I think that’s what we all need to do over the next few weeks.”
Why Dessers has to be trusted in the title run-in
Cyriel Dessers had scored just once in the league when Michael Beale was sacked, and since Philippe Clement arrived at Rangers he has scored at a rate better than one goal every two games.
This would be considerably more if it wasn’t for his 23 big chances missed as reported by David Edgar on Heart and Hand’s Daily Update for Tuesday 23 of April.
For perspective, Kyogo Furuhashi is second on the list of Premiership strikers with 21.
This sounds bad, but when you add this to his goal conversion rate of 15%, he is third just 1% behind Bojan Miovski at the top of the charts.
For those that love expected goals statistics, despite the large number of big chances missed, Dessers is only one goal under his expected goals.
Lawrence Shankland might not have missed as many big chances as Dessers, but he’s also not converted as many of his either.
Theoretically, in the same team, Dessers scores more goals.
There is no better time for a striker to find form than at the sharp end of a campaign when trophies are being handed out.
With four tough league games and two Old Firm derbies that could define Rangers season, it would be a good time for Cyriel Dessers to show that he can top all the right charts.
