This must have been the first of the red flags for Rohl. It wasn’t just that Chermiti failed to score, it was that he never really threatened to score.
His effort was harmless. A lack of confidence, sure. A young player, no question. But a player, also, that Rangers have spent £8m on.
By the time he was taken off deep into the second half, his goalscoring record at Rangers, Everton and Sporting stood at three goals in more than 25 hours of football.
That touch from the header was the only one Chermiti managed in the Brann penalty area all game. That’s as much a criticism of his team-mates’ desperate inability to create chances as anything else.
The 21-year-old’s passing accuracy was the joint-lowest of any player on the pitch and he won only four of his 13 duels.
Chermiti might come good, but Rohl does not have time to wait and the chances are that if he was given the £8m splurged on the striker he’d think of any number of other ways to spend it.
The striker is a Kevin Thelwell project. The sporting director is all-in on him, lauding his promise as recently as a few days ago when Rohl was unveiled.
Thelwell’s faith in the £8m spend seems unshakeable, which is quite something given that Chermiti’s last senior goal was the fourth in a 4-0 win for Sporting over Pacos Ferreira in May 2023.
So far, the striker is a proving to be a symbol of what is wrong at Rangers and what Rohl must somehow fix – poor decision-making and the bizarre feat of investing a lot of money on a team only to make it even worse.