For more than eight months Micky Beale spent his time looking for two ‘number nines’ having given up on Alfredo Morelos and Antonio Colak.
The chunky Colombian is the leading European goalscorer for the Ibrox club, last season Colak scored away to PSV Eindhoven to earn his club a place in the group stage draw for the Champions League.
A year earlier Colak scored twice at Ibrox for the 10 men of Malmo to kill off Steven Gerrard’s Champions League dreams. The Swedes went on to beat Ludogorets to pick up £25m from reaching the group stage.
Promises of how things would be massively different this season sustained Beale through underwhelming shapeless displays where Todd Cantwell and Nico Raskin were excused from guilt by association.
After scouring the globe Beale turned to Italy to sign two strikers freshly relegated from Serie A. Sam Lammers and Cyriel Dessers had their journeyman careers hyped beyond belief but when the talking stopped they have misfired.
Dessers did score last night against Servette but followed that up by giving away a penalty to leave the tie in the balance, tilting in favour of Sevette.
Lammers is clearly a fish out of water, it is easy to see why he is quickly moved on with Atalanta who were delighted to salvage £3m for the ‘striker’ that doesn’t score.
After last night’s narrow win over Servette Beale knows that the snipers are out, typically he washed his hands of the blame, instead pointing towards his star number nines.
The Daily Record reports Beale saying:
I’ll give our forwards [a break] at the moment because they’re new coming into the club and it’s early in the season. But if we keep creating chances like that then we have to take them if we’re to put teams away.
We started really really well and I thought the energy from the team was really good in and out of possession. The desire shown by Nico Raskin and Todd Cantwell before the first goal to go chase a couple of lost causes down was fantastic.
I felt Borna Barisic had a good night and put some great crosses in. Playing with the two No.9s gives you that opportunity that we got when Danilo went across the first post and Cyriel scores. At that moment we were in a great place. But after that I thought we were wasteful. Then comes the VAR decision for the penalty. I thought it was harsh but that’s the ruling.
The second half, their keeper made a fantastic save from Sam and Cyriel and we had other moments again where we were wasteful on a night when we played well in my opinion for a long period of time.
Beale also added Danilo to his squad, paying Feyenoord £6m for a striker who was released by Ajax 12 months earlier.
With three weeks left in the transfer window there is still little sign of interest in Glen Kamara, Scott Wright, Rabbi Matondo, Ben Davies, Ianis Hagi, Borna Barisic and Ridvan Yilmaz.
