RANGERS signed their second striker on the space of a few hours on Tuesday after Cedric Itten signed a four-year deal at the club, following Anderlecht’s Kemar Roofe through the entrance at Ibrox.
Steven Gerrard has been up front about his intentions to bolster his side’s attacking options after Jermain Defoe picked up a hamstring injury, and the addition of the two forwards would suggest that Alfredo Morelos is closing in on a move to Ligue 1’s Lille.
Itten is something of an unknown quantity for Rangers supporters, having spent the entirety of his career to date in his native Switzerland. But the signing, on paper at least, looks like it will add a new dimension to Gerrard’s front line – and gives the Ibrox boss multiple options up top.
While Roofe is a striker perhaps in a similar-ish mould to Morelos – pacy, looking to break behind the opposition lines and happy to drift into wide areas to receive the ball – Itten is more of a traditional centre-forward; a focal point for his side’s attack who does most of his best work in the opposition box, but also one who has on occasion filled in as a number 10 for St Gallen.
Itten scored 19 goals in 34 outings in the Swiss top flight last season, a fine record that saw the striker finish the campaign as the league’s second-top scorer. But for a clearer indication of the type of goals the 23-year-old has been scoring, we must dig a little deeper.
All but one of the Switzerand internationalist’s goals came from inside the area last season, and no other player scored more than Itten’s five headers in last year’s Super League. By November, the 23-year-old had seven league goals to his name and was rewarded with a call-up to the international side. He came off the bench with 10 minutes to go against Georgia and marked his debut for the national side with the game’s only goal before bagging a brace and an assist a few days later against Gibraltar on his first start.
A quick look at Itten’s expected goals (xG) for St Gallen suggests that his goalscoring rate is both sustainable and indicative of his overall performances. As a metric, xG is used to calculate both the number of opportunities a player is presented with and their likelihood of finding the net, giving us a cumulative figure that describes how many goals a player should be scoring based on the quality of chances they create. In Itten’s instance, his goals tally for the season (20) is essentially identical to his xG (19.97), implying that he is neither over- nor under-performing in this regard: his goalscoring output is representative of the chances he has converted.
As well as providing an effective goal threat in the opposition box, Itten has shown himself to be good at holding up play in the final third. Only two players – Young Boys’ Jean-Pierre Nsame and St Gallen’s Ermedin Demirovic – had more touches in their opponents’ area last season and Itten recorded the tenth-most deep completions (passes to a team-mate in the opposition’s box) of any player in the Swiss Super League. Additionally, he attempted around 14 offensive duels per 90 minutes played with a success rate of 36% - for context, Morelos averaged 15 per outing last term with a similar success rate.
All this suggests that Itten will give Gerrard something that he has never had at Rangers – an old-fashioned centre-forward who can impose himself in the final third. Morelos provided physicality but few would suggest he was an out-and-out target man. Defoe, for all his qualities, is more of poacher than a traditional number 9. And with the crossing abilities of James Tavernier and Borna Barisic on either flank, Itten could provide a very useful option for Gerrard if he feels the need to change his side’s attacking style.
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