Rangers hit the jackpot when they signed Tavernier
ON JULY 20, 2015, Mark Warburton paid Wigan Athletic £200,000 for a striker and a defender. The striker was Martyn Waghorn, a player best remembered for a row in the street with a schoolkid eating chips. The defender was James Tavernier (right), a player fast becoming one of the best pound-for-pound signings in Rangers’ history. The day he agreed to sign for a club battling to escape the Scottish Championship, the right-back set modest targets: ‘I like to get on the ball as much as I can, get forward and create goals.’ He made no mention of scoring goals, as well. Yet his 82 strikes in seven seasons are as many as Jorg Albertz scored in Rangers colours and when rivals point to all the penalties the Ibrox club are awarded, it makes no difference to the bottom line. Full-backs are not supposed to be the top scorers in the Europa League. Former Celtic striker and pundit Chris Sutton once branded Tavernier a ‘serial loser’. And while his record of one domestic trophy in seven years offers room for improvement, that would be swiftly forgotten if he became only the second skipper in Rangers’ history to lift a European trophy. Beating Hearts in the Scottish Cup final would do no harm, either. Neither scenario is a given. The Ibrox atmosphere has played a huge part in the run to the final and Eintracht Frankfurt have travelled well. Win or lose in the heat of Seville,
Hearts will fancy their chances of an upset at Hampden a week today. For now, at least, Rangers and their army of supporters can harbour legitimate dreams of glory. By reaching a UEFA final, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and his players have placed Scottish clubs back on the map. The seven goals scored by Tavernier have played a huge part in that. Lift the Europa League trophy in Seville on Wednesday and he will rightly be bracketed as one of the great Rangers captains.