AdminTwo seasons. 52 goals. Four managers. A League Cup. Those goals away at Man United, Fenerbahce and Real Betis. Cup final heartbreak. And an exit he still has complicated feelings about. Regrets he harbours. Old Firm near misses and referee calls, he still can’t understand.
“If I think about one word, it’s intense,” he says from Greece, where he’s now settled with Panathinaikos. “Intense in the good sense and sometimes also in the bad sense, because you get pulled into this club and you feel it everywhere you go.”
He is candid about his difficult start under Michael Beale, his resurgence under Philippe Clement and the season he ended as Scottish football’s top scorer. He is equally honest about what he believes Rangers need to recapture the league title, and why the erosion of an experienced core matters more than most appreciate.
“There is no such thing as only development at Rangers,” he says emphatically. “Every weekend, you need to win. If you don’t win, people don’t care about development… It’s only about one thing, winning on the Saturday, winning on the Sunday.”
With James Tavernier‘s exit now confirmed, Dessers’ words carry added weight. He speaks at length about the dressing room culture he walked into – with Goldson, Barisic, Lundstram, Butland – and how that environment shaped his own development. He explains why it’s essential for new players to be able to count on an experienced core who know what this club, and this league, entails. Dessers also speaks frankly about what he felt was missing in his second season, and why that mattered.
On his exit, the 31-year-old describes a “confusing” summer in which the club never fully committed to him as their number one striker, despite 29 goals the previous campaign. “That would be very sour,” he says of the prospect of starting on the bench the next campaign. “Maybe for everybody, this is now the good moment to make this step.”
He is warm about Russell Martin despite the former manager’s difficulties, glowing about Youssef Chermiti and still animated about the what-ifs: the disallowed Sima goal in the Scottish Cup Final, the Old Firm turning point early in his time at the club, the penalty call that never came in the League Cup, the frustration at only winning one trophy in Glasgow.
The near-misses still weigh heavily. But so does the pride, which he didn’t really have while still at the club, too focused then on his frustrations. Full of praise for the unique nature of Glasgow and Rangers, he speaks of friends and family who only came to appreciate the size of the club when they witnessed it.
“Even if you try to stay cool and say no, the club will pull you in. I think that’s the beautiful thing about Rangers. You have to go through it and it will push you down, but it will also pull you up again. Those are the things that I will remember forever in my career and in my life after my career.”
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