There’s always the temptation, especially at a club with such suffocating demands like Rangers, to rush to a decisive verdict on players. Especially when a defender arrives for a decent amount of money. If he plays a couple of games in a team doing terribly and then isn’t seen for months then surely he must be rubbish and yet another waste of money?
Football discourse doesn’t really reward patience. Football fans prefer really loud certainty - ideally delivered hard and early - so we can move on to the next thing to worry about.
From an analytical point of view, things could do with being a little slower. Most people will tell you that it can take around 10 games before you start to see a manager’s tactical identity on the pitch, and the same is mostly true for players. There will always be outliers, whether its early surprises or late developers, but generally you can start to build a decent picture once a player is over the 1000 minute threshold. Not because you should know everything by then but because how a player performs has been tested against enough opponents and in enough different scenarios. Add in at least one genuinely stressful fixture and you can start to take it seriously.
This isn’t a piece about what Fernandez might become in three years’ time if everything goes right and nobody gets injured and the manager stays and blah blah blah.
This is about what Fernandez is doing for Rangers right now. What he does and just as importantly what he very clearly does not. And why understanding the difference properly matters far more than thinking every centre-back needs to be a hybrid of Beckenbauer and Van Dijk before they’re deemed good.
It’s also about what Danny Röhl sees in Fernandez, how he’s being utilised and what his strengths and weaknesses are.
He crossed that magic 1000 minute threshold during Rangers 3-1 victory against Celtic at Parkhead last Saturday. At half time, it was reasonable to question if he should come back out for the second half but that’s the fine margins you live or die in as a Rangers player.
Mistakes at this club look worse. Good, sensible performances are treated as par or the minimum expectation. That’s the nature of the beast.
Pre-Rangers Career
Despite being 25 on his next birthday in the summer, he only made his English Football League debut on the 16th March 2024, playing one whole minute for Peterborough in a 1-0 defeat to Portsmouth. Over the next 15 months or so, he made 38 league appearances for The Posh prior to his move to Rangers. In his whole pre-Rangers career, he only played 70 times and barely reached the 5000 minute mark overall. That’s 55 games in six full seasons.
It’s safe to say that despite his age, he’s more than a bit behind in his football development if we focus purely on minutes on the pitch.
In season 2024/25, Fernandez played over 2,600 minutes in League One as they finished 18th. His minutes were split fairly evenly between the right and left sides of central defence in a team that wasn’t close to one to the best in their league. They didn’t dominate possession regularly and he often had to defend space rather than manage it.
His profile there was clear and a bit obvious - Fernandez was a front-foot defender who liked to deal with problems happening in front of him. He stepped out aggressively, and backed himself physically to come out with the ball. His duel and interception numbers stood out in a league where turnovers and direct football are par for the course, and in the air he was already operating at an impressively high level.
In the past, I’ve been guilty of over-focusing on the need for ball-playing defenders at Rangers due to the amount of possession the club have domestically. Unfortunately, unless you are spending large sums of money then you aren’t going to find full package defenders who can play out from the back and still dominate their man defensively 99 times out of 100. At this level, there always needs to be trade offs and it’s all about what is deemed most important. Fernandez isn’t terrific in possession, but he’s not terrible and coupled with his physical size and relative speed it seemed a good mix for a Rangers defender.
On the ball, there were positives at Peterborough, but also limits. He was fine in short build-up and accurate when playing vertical passes into midfield or channels under limited pressure. He wasn’t clever with it though, he didn’t play risky passes into midfield to break lines or try to switch the play to create quick overloads. When pressed, his game simplified quickly and he moved to safety first defending. That wasn’t fatal at League One level, but would maybe be a red flag for English clubs operating higher up the leagues.
Data from last season backs that up. Against centre back peers, Fernandez tended to come out ahead defensively and lag behind technically. Within Peterborough’s squad, he looked like one of their more aggressive and mobile defenders, but also one of the more foul-prone and reactive. The conclusion was fairly straightforward: physically ready for a step up but technically needing structure and coaching if he was going to play consistently well in a high-possession system.
The Rangers environment matters
I was intrigued by this signing in the summer more than excited. I’ve long asked for Rangers to sign footballers who are physically more dominant than their opposition - whether thats strength or speed - and Fernandez looked like he fit the bill. The price of around £3m seemed more than a touch on the steep side, but as said above he felt like a player who might have some skills that Rangers lacked.
As we know, this is a dominant domestic side that plays high, spends long spells in possession, and defends more against space than anything else. When Rangers concede chances, they tend to concede them quickly (and fatally), often through counter attacks rather than sustained pressure in the box.
Those are the facts, before you get into coaching, tactics or individual players. That’s the challenge and that really should shape everything a Rangers centre-back needs to be.
Fernandez isn’t spending games defending his six-yard box under siege. He’s defending spaces, sometimes big ones as Rangers press high in the opponents half. He’s holding a line closer to the halfway line than his own penalty area and being asked to make decisions uncomfortably early, knowing full well that if he gets one wrong there’s not a lot of cover or sympathy waiting behind him.
A consistent defensive role
One of the clearest signals over his 1,000-plus minutes with Rangers so far is how little Danny Röhl has changed Fernandez’s role.
He has mostly remained the left-sided centre-back either in a three or a four, the dominant one who steps out either to follow his man or to defend on the front foot. In possession, his positioning is stable to the point of being predictable. He sits slightly wider than his partner, deeper than the left-sided central midfielder. Passing data across multiple matches reinforce this. He recycles possession and allows others to take risks on the ball. Rangers have clearly defined his role and asked him to keep it simple.
His interception numbers are high for a centre-back in a possession dominant team which reinforces the point that he isn’t waiting for duels to happen, he’s trying to win the ball back quickly, for better or worse. He’s usually stepping across a forward receiving on the half-turn to nick it or trying to cut out passes into the channel. Because of his size, he can make attackers think twice and swoop in to take the ball back.
He sometimes has a tendency to play like he’s always thinking about the next pass once he wins possession, which is fine but can then come across a little rash if he doesn’t get to the ball first. He wants to commits to challenges early and tries to kill counter attacks before they gather momentum.
This fits Rangers’ high line and lets the the team keep pushing forward and the pressing to remain aggressive. It also explains why his mistakes, when they occur, can look stark. When you step in early, you either win the ball or you’ve made a mistake. Fernandez accepts that trade off and keeps doing it consistently for better or worse.
In the air, Fernandez has been much more than what Rangers hoped for. He wins over 80% of challenges in the air and it’s no surprise that Rangers consistently leave him responsible for first contact. You can also see it in how opponents attack too as direct balls into his area of the pitch become less attractive. Play gets forced wide and second balls become the primary target. That alters opposition game plans and allows Rangers to compress midfield space more aggressively.
On the flip side, when you have someone of that height in the team, midfielders also learn that he’ll win the ball a lot and they can sometimes gamble a little on their positioning to help quickly build another attack.
Areas for improvement
On the ground, Fernandez remains solid rather than extremely dominant. His defensive duel success is good, but he isn’t a natural wide defender. When he’s pulled into wide spaces and isolated against pace then he has a tendency to struggle. We saw this probably most clearly in the first half at Parkhead, where Rangers were very poor overall. The midfield two struggled to deal with Celtic’s rotations and quick passes down the channels which left Fernandez and left back Jayden Meghoma with too many players and too much space to defend. Similar things have happened away to Dundee Utd and at home to Aberdeen recently so it’s definitely a pattern and an area where improvements can be made.
The data above, backs up these issues and are definite areas for improvement. Both he and Meghoma appear to look more comfortable when Rangers play their 3-4-3 variation, as it accentuates their strengths and helps to cover their weaknesses.
Fernandez is at his best when he can step forward and challenge his man with support around him, as you saw in the second half against Celtic when Rangers moved to a flatter midfield three which offered more protection.
I think thats a big plus point for Danny Röhl, the manager tried to be aggressive and go on the front foot early against a struggling team but when it didn’t work, he tweaked things slightly and went back to basics, using the best system for the players he had available.
On the ball
As you would expect when Rangers are so dominant in most games, Fernandez completes a high percentage of passes with most of them over short and medium distances. He does carry the ball, but only when theres a clear opportunity for it. Think Mikey Moore’s excellent (but offside) second goal against Kilmarnock, where Fernandez powerfully wins the ball back and drives forward channelling his inner Madjid Bougherra.
Statistically, Fernandez completes 87% of his passes of which most of those are under limited pressure, but he ranks in the top 5% for centre backs involved in build up. This shows that even if he’s not making line breaking passes that directly result in shots at goal, he’s regularly part of moves that do eventually lead to chances.
He attempts far more long passes when he’s being pressed than when he isn’t which reaffirms that he doesn’t look to switch play or stretch teams but is happy to go long when needed.
The most valuable development so far will have come when Rangers haven’t been comfortable in games. You can see in those situations that he is consistently doing the same things. When dealing with long balls and defending counter attacks he always tries to step out and commit his man. He prioritises stopping the attack rather than delaying it which is something Rangers have lacked in recent years as they have been too passive defensively.
When it works, it works. When it doesn’t then its a foul conceded or occasionally it ends up a lot worse, but thats defending at a big club.
The Set-Piece Superhero
One of the many challenges when watching centre-backs is trying to gauge their individual impact on games and separate that from how a team is being asked to play. Being good in the air is great, but only really matters if the team knows how to exploit it. Otherwise you’re just winning headers for the sake of winning headers and they go back to the opposition and start again.
For set pieces, I think you could say that rang true for Rangers for a long time. Scott Fry arrived from Lincoln as a set piece coach with a great track record on 18th November. The remit was fairly clear: improve how Rangers utilise defensive and attacking set pieces.
Here we are in mid January, and the change in gears is obvious. There hasn’t been some great revolution, with complex well rehearsed routines - it all seems to be fairly simple but effective. All of a sudden Rangers are scoring regularly from corners and attacking free kicks. Not freak goals or just reacting quickest to loose balls in the box, but consistent deliveries and runs that keep appearing in different matches, with some different players scoring goals.
That matters for Fernández, because it turns his huge aerial strength into a proper functional weapon. At the time of writing, Rangers have scored the second most set piece goals in the league this season with 11. Hearts are top with 12, Celtic are bottom with just one. For context, last season, Rangers were the worst set piece team in the league scoring only 8 all season and none until December.
Fry can’t take all the credit, as Rangers had scored five goals from set pieces this season prior to his appointment but it clearly feels a lot more sustainable now.
One of the subtler benefits of Fernández’s presence on attacking set pieces is that he doesn’t need to be the finisher to cause issues. Opponents respect the danger he brings and will be drawn to him in the box, consciously or not. That alone creates space elsewhere, which you can see playing out with Nico Raskin’s goal against Aberdeen in the last game.
Watch Rangers’ recent set-piece goals and a theme emerges: Fernández’s run often pulls a defender or two towarda him, opening up areas for others arriving late or attacking the far post.
This is where just having good deliveries from set pieces isn’t enough. You need to match it up with the players in the box and exploit it as best you can.
It’s easy to reduce set-piece improvement to raw numbers but as you see with Arsenal in the Premier League, when a team becomes genuinely dangerous from dead balls, opponents start to defend differently. They might try to concede fewer corners or avoid cheap fouls in wide areas. They might clear their lines more than try to play out.
All of that plays into Rangers hands.
What does the future hold?
It would be very Rangers for this article to come out and Fernandez drops off a cliff, performance wise. Maybe when Derek Cornelius returns his minutes will reduce again and he will be back to being another waste of money signing from the dreaded EFL.
But based on what we know now, you can say that Fernandez is doing exactly what Rangers need him to do - dominate on the deck and in the air and helping to restart attacks early. He’s not reinventing the wheel but he’s been aggressive at both ends of the pitch which counts for a lot in Scotland. Whether he’s a long-term starter or a strong rotational piece depends on how Rangers perform and evolve over the next 12-18 months.
We know how he plays defensively suits a team like Rangers and we know for a fact that he’s currently Rangers joint top scorer in the league with four goals. The fact that that’s symptomatic of Rangers attacking issues is irrelevant. If you struggle to score enough goals, then that set piece power Fernandez brings becomes even more valuable.
What you still can’t say is how far he can go. He’s still young in terms of minutes played, but will be 25 in the summer. Development of any player isn’t linear, but on the whole you’d imagine there isn’t too much more to come from Fernandez individually. Put some more experienced, talented footballers into this Rangers team and quite a lot of them will look a good bit better than they do - so I would assume that would also apply to Fernandez.
As with anything at Rangers, time and ultimately how many trophies you win are usually the decisive factors.