Todd Cantwell makes his Rangers debut: Ibrox Noise verdict | OneFootball

New Rangers signing Todd Cantwell wasted no time making his mark on Rangers fans as the attacking playmaker started his first match at Ibrox inside days of joining up – so what did Ibrox Noise make of the new boy and his debut performance in Govan?

Let’s not get hysterical but he was very, very good, and we could understand, on this brief glimpse, a bit of the reasoning behind Norwich City rating him at £50M only 18 months ago.

This was the best debut for a Rangers signing we can remember – we cannot recall a debut for a new player that was this composed, skilful and articulate on the pitch, playing for the team like he’d been a Ranger for years.

You’d have to go back to…2007 and Carlos Cuellar for a Rangers debut at this level that was that good where the player was effortless in his quality and had absolutely no qualms – filled with confidence, Cantwell showed why Norwich did once rate him as around £50M, and wouldn’t sell below that price.

He lost direction, but he may just have found it at Ibrox. From what we gather, Radio Clyde smeared his display as slow and out of touch, which is beyond laughable. Bearing in mind this was his first match in 2 or 3 months he impressed remarkably.

Was he the greatest player we’ve ever seen? No, let’s not get silly – he had a great debut, but we have seen good debuts in recent times only for the player to tumble after that. He was a lot better than that, so we hold a bit more water with Cantwell actually being the real deal rather than a flash in the pan.

Remember, he has the CV behind him, a CV of a player who can go far in the game.

The one thing that struck us about his display was despite St Johnstone closing down all our players, Cantwell kept on finding acres of space and seemed to have all the time in the world. He floated around, finding pockets to burst into, using both wings as alternate routes but mainly floating centrally behind the striker.

It is one of the great compliments to a midfield player that he can seem like he has all the time in the world – Pirlo was like that, Davo had it in his pomp, and Cantwell also appears to have the same gift.

He didn’t set Ibrox on fire, but he did very very well and did enough to show that when he’s up to speed, this lad could be something very special.

We look forward to Todd Cantwell and his future at Rangers.