Nathan Patterson: Is Everton signing from Rangers untested understudy or game-changing talent?
- Published
Nathan Patterson scored his first Scotland goal in a win in Moldova in November
Steven Gerrard, Andy Robertson, John McGinn, and Steve Clarke are just some of those in football to have raved about new Everton signing Nathan Patterson.
As his managers and team-mates, you might expect them to. But Gerrard and Clarke in particular are not so easy to please, and Everton have seen enough from the 20-year-old in just 15 starts to pay Rangers around £11.5m plus add-ons for him.
So why is Patterson rated so highly? Why has he played so few games? And have Rangers made the right call?
What are Everton getting?
In short, a player with significant potential. With Seamus Coleman now 33, the Blues are clearly investing in the future as well as immediate competition for their captain.
At the age of 20, Patterson looks physically ready for the Premier League, having bulked up over the last few years. At nearly 6ft 3in tall, he is good in the air as well as being quick and powerful.
He's a determined one-on-one defender too, but his strengths lie in attack. He played as a right winger for the Scotland under-21s on a few occasions, and off the bench for Rangers this season under new boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst.
One of his two goals for the Ibrox side came in the Europa League last 32 against Royal Antwerp last term when he made a storming overlapping run before slotting coolly into the far corner.
Against Moldova, he combined with McGinn to come inside and sweep home a left-footed finish in a crucial qualifier for Scotland, before crossing for Che Adams to score the second. He also came off the bench to set up the winner against the Faroe Islands with another pinpoint cross.
Those interventions demonstrated his technical qualities going forward, but also his mentality. Both for club and country he stepped in to big games with little experience and performed. However, it has not been seamless.
He - along with four team-mates - was banned for four games last year after going to a party in breach of lockdown rules which were in force at the time, which proved a tough lesson after some good displays.
And in the first half against Slavia he was given a tough time by talented winger Abdallah Sima, but adapted smartly to put in a good second-half display in which he made some crucial challenges.
It was similar for Scotland against Moldova and Israel, where he was a bit erratic early on and looked nervous, only to recover his composure and put in fantastic performances.
"He was the one being aggressive in the press," Scotland captain and Liverpool left-back Andy Robertson said of his team-mate after the Moldova game.
"He was the one who made the goal, really. In the first 10 minutes he looked as though he was maybe a wee bit excited and erratic, but we managed to get hold of him at the goal and tell him to calm down. He did that and started to pick the passes."
With more game time and instruction from the famously studious Rafael Benitez, Patterson has the qualities to follow in Robertson's footsteps and be be a success on Merseyside.
So why has he played so little?
James Tavernier. The Englishman has been Rangers' most consistently excellent player for several seasons now, registering startling goal and assist numbers for a right-back.
The 30-year-old has scored 26 times and assisted 44 more in the last two and a half seasons for Rangers.
To add to that, Tavernier is captain of the club and rarely gets injured, so even if his performances drop off, Patterson faced an almost impossible task of displacing him in the team.
With fewer options in the same position, Scotland boss Clarke was more willing to throw him in after picking him for Euro 2020 on the back of good displays while Tavernier was injured towards the end of last season.
Have Rangers made the right call?
As a club, Rangers have stressed the need to kickstart their player-trading model in order to have financial stability.
Interest in players such as Alfredo Morelos, Borna Barisic, Glen Kamara and Ryan Kent has been rebuffed as they held out for higher fees amid a determination to get back to the top of Scottish football while running at a financial loss.
The league title was achieved last year, yet no sales were made in the summer, a position which could not hold. There are valuable assets at Ibrox now, with Joe Aribo and Kent arguably the most prized.
But with those two so pivotal to their ambitions this season and players such as Kamara, Tavernier, Barisic, and Connor Goldson at a point where their age or contract situation lessens their value, Patterson was probably their only option to get a big fee without seriously weakening their team with an automatic Champions League berth potentially on the line.
They would either have had to play Patterson regularly and hope he would recoup a bigger fee with more games under his belt (more akin to the £25m Celtic got from Arsenal for Kieran Tierney), or act now and potentially free up funds.
The also burnishes Rangers' reputation as a place for developing talent, one rivals Celtic have established over the last decade.
The downside for the Ibrox fans is being deprived of the opportunity to see Patterson flourish. Football should not all be about hard numbers, and an impressive academy graduate disappearing after 15 starts is hard to take.
Then there's the issue of finding another right-back to compete with Tavernier, who at 30 will not maintain his current levels forever. So, only time will tell whether Rangers have made the right call over the long term.
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