Valued at £30M, why has it not worked for Oliver Antman at Rangers? | OneFootball

When Rangers signed Oliver Antman, Dutch football metrics expert Joost van der Leij claimed Rangers had ‘mugged’ the Go Ahead Eagles.

At £4M, he considered Antman’s contribution to the Eredivisie side to be worth more like £30M and it would cost them that to replace him.

This gave every indication Rangers had signed a world class winger with the potential to hit those kinds of market values.

Debut

And his debut v Plzen demonstrated that player in abundance. He secured a Champions League assist, and he terrorised the Czech defenders with ease.

Then Russel Martin got his hands on him and frankly killed all the aggression. He murdered the freedom, quality and dynamic from the Fin and Antman faded fast.

His biggest issue then was that new manager initially Danny Rohl didn’t play really with wingers at all. The manager is adapting now, adding Andreas Skov Olsen. And that’s a problem too.

Danny Rohl

In short, Rohl, like he didn’t with Findlay Curtis or Lyall Cameron, doesn’t favour Antman. He’s brought in Skov Olsen in his position and that’s a signal to the Finn that he’s surplus.

His injury with Finland also did not help, and he found himself drifting further from the first team picture.

The boy may have talent and be a good winger but he just hasn’t had the opportunity to show that. First Russell Martin coached his creativity out of him, which killed his confidence, then Rohl just wasn’t interested. Even when Antman was fit.

Stats

There’s no denying his stats. He was excellent at Go Ahead Eagles, one of the players of the season that term.

But he’s just not been able to get any foothold at Ibrox, and Rohl made a big statement signing Skov Olsen.

Indeed, Rangers have a pile of wingers, and the curiosity of them is a lot of speculation this window.

Rabbi Matondo, Mikey Moore, Antman, Djeidi Gassama and of course Skov Olsen are more than enough for Rangers to get on it. It should be borne in mind naturally that Rohl still isn’t strictly into wide men, and his formation is hard to pin down.

Formation

Most stats would have it as a 4-2-3-1 but on the pitch it’s more dynamic, and has less shape.

Skov Olsen suited this because his position is far from fixed, Kevin, and he explained that. Even if most Rangers fans didn’t quite grasp it, and Kevin didn’t either.

Antman is more of a wide and traditional winger, but reconciling that with Rohl’s system which is harder to define has been a problem for him.

As it is, Feyenoord are interested now in taking him on board, and we’d be sad to see him go. We like him, and he’s clearly a talented winger, but circumstance, like with Lyall Cameron, just didn’t favour Oliver Antman at all at Rangers.