Cyriel Dessers tipped to rewrite Rangers script as Lee McCulloch sees unlikely title hero of the past in Nigerian

When Philippe Clement talks about his players writing their own stories, Lee McCulloch knows exactly what he means. The former Rangers skipper was on the Ibrox books at time when Gers were penning a celebrated trilogy with three straight titles during Walter Smith’s second stint as Light Blues boss.

Every instalment was a page-turner, packed with drama and excitement as titanic tussles with Celtic went to the wire. Yet, when it came to the final chapter of each edition, it was a member of the support cast who ended up stealing the scene from Smith’s central characters.

Just when it appeared that the script had been written for the likes of Kris Boyd, Kenny Miller or Nikica Jelavic to claim the honour of firing Rangers to SPL glory, up would pop Kyle Lafferty as the Northern Irishman proved to be Rangers’ unlikely leading man three years on the trot with title-winning strikes at Tannadice, Easter Road and Rugby Park.

While much was expected of the Enniskillen ace when he joined Gers in a £3million move from Burnley in 2008, his Ibrox tale was one of ups and downs, with those end-of-season high-points often balanced out against underwhelming displays at other times.

It’s a narrative that’s similar to the love-hate plot Cyriel Dessers is currently playing out with the Ibrox faithful. On the face of it, a tally of 16 goals and seven assists doesn’t look a bad return on the £4.5million Rangers spent on the striker when they signed him last summer from Italians Cremonese.

But stats are a little bit like bikinis in that they don’t reveal the whole story and a more truthful account of Dessers’ Rangers record is that in spells he’s looked like a man cast in the wrong movie, utterly out of his depth.

However, having seen Lafferty