Rangers have not yet had value for money for £4.5M man Mohamed Diomande | OneFootball

We’ve covered Rangers midfielder Mohamed Diomande a few times on Ibrox Noise, and we can’t help but look at him again after another (underwhelmingly) poor display at the weekend.

Yes he technically ‘assisted’ Vaclav Cerny’s first on Sunday but kind of like with the Czech’s second, Hector Henrique was technically credited with ‘assisting’ Diego Maradona’s second against England in ‘88 – we’re not quite sure how much credit we can give that!

As for Dio, he’s not been a good use of £4.5M so far, it’s that simple.

He joined in January, didn’t particularly settle in last season, had the whole of preseason to get up to speed, and is pretty much delivering the same this season too.

His highlights were some bright displays in the cup last season, and a better showing against Malmo this campaign, but overall it’s really not shining for him the way it should for a player of his transfer fee – he certainly isn’t being consistent.

See, this is the Nordsjælland model – they import African players that they kind of reared themselves, specifically in Ghana’s Right to Dream Academy, then sell them for big money from the Danish league into mainland Europe.

It’s a curious model, and the results are honestly pretty questionable in terms of success and player quality – but the Danes don’t care.

They got £30M this summer from sales of African players, including Dio, last summer it was £20M – for them their trading model is exceptional and is shelling them in tonnes of cash.

But for Rangers we’ve received a rather overpriced and underwhelming player who hasn’t delivered in the 10 months we’ve had him. A scam? We’d rather not go there but it’s canny to say the least.

We’re always wary of the ‘Borna Barisic Fallacy’ which saw the Croat take literally 13 months to settle in at Ibrox. That free kick at St Mirren saw him kick start his Rangers career; but he was already an established international with his country, his country who had just been in the world cup final. He just wasn’t yet showing that talent yet with his new club.

Dio, on the other hand, has no international footprint at all, just 20 minutes of football with his country (Ivory Coast, having switched allegiance from Ghana) so far, nothing to speak of.

We’re already seeing November in the reasonably near future, and Dio has so far just not been a particular impressive performer at any real point since joining. He hasn’t strung two matches together where we can nod approvingly and be glad he’s ours.

We really, really hope if the manager sticks with the boy that he dramatically starts to improve.