David Wren, Iain Duff and Ross Benn discussed all things Rangers on the latest edition of the Gersnet podcast and during the show, the panel spent some time talking about Gers winger Brandon Barker.
Barker moved to Ibrox from Manchester City back in August 2019 and it may be fair to say that the 23-year-old has not exactly set the world alight since joining the Gers.
During his first season with the Glasgow-based club, Barker made just 13 appearances for the club in all competitions, scoring one goal and failing to provide a single assist over that period.
This season, Barker has made four Premiership appearances for Rangers thus far, two of which have been starts. As yet, he has failed to make a single goal contribution and has earned a disappointing average WhoScored rating of 6.5/10 from those games, which ranks him as Rangers’ sixth-lowest-rated player in the league for the 2020/21 campaign thus far, according to the stats website.
With that in mind, it may be understandable why Benn shared some criticism for the Rangers winger during this recent edition of the Gersnet podcast.
He said: “Brandon Barker, generally, I won’t pretend that I’m a big fan of him. I think that he’s a slightly weird player for us in that he genuinely just doesn’t really seem to have the quality that the other players have.
“He kind of just sticks out as not being quite naturally as good as the rest of them but maybe that’s unfair; obviously, we keep getting reports that in training, he’s the best of the bunch and that he’s setting Auchenhowie alight, but he just doesn’t quite do it on matchday.
“I don’t really know what he brings to the team. There certainly hasn’t really been any end product so far.
“I don’t see him surviving this transfer window and maybe I’ll be eating my words on that – maybe he’ll stay and he’ll have an excellent season, but he’s an attacking, creative player and okay, he’s not had a great deal of game time, but he’s only scored one goal for Rangers.”
Do you think that Brandon Barker needs more time to show what he can do at Rangers?
YES
NO
TIF Thoughts…
As can be seen in what Benn had to say, he seems to believe that Barker is simply not good enough and we feel that Barker’s goals and assists record for Rangers does make it difficult to disagree with Benn’s assessment of the player.
However, the 23-year-old has not had a very consistent run of games thus far in his Rangers career and with that in mind, as well as Benn’s comment that the winger is supposedly known to be one of the Gers’ best trainers, perhaps he will improve as he gets more game time under his belt.