ONE of the first signings of the Steven Gerrard era and a player who will always throw his body on the line, Niko Katic very quickly built up a rapport with the Rangers fan base.

He was thrust into an early Europa League qualification campaign that featured heroic defensive exploits in Russia and a tie-winning goal against Osijek - earning his manager’s adulation.

But upon the culmination of football’s lockdown in 2020, Katic would not return for over a year. He missed the entirety of season 20/21 through injury.

“It’s about how we can get him a certain amount of games to get him right up to speed and to the best place he can be in,” Gerrard said of the defender earlier this term before he headed back to Croatia on a season-long loan.

"Because there’s no getting away from it, it takes time to get back from that level of injury."

The season so far

Katic’s side, Hajduk Split, sit fourth in the Croatian top-flight. To this point, the 25-year-old has featured in six of their matches – starting the last four.

READ MORE: Does Nikola Katic have Rangers future - or has he missed the Ibrox evolution?

The HNL division is familiar to Katic having spent the duration of his professional career in the league with Slaven Belupo prior to his move to Ibrox. His former side would flag up some positional weaknesses at the weekend in a 3-2 defeat, however.

Both the first and second goals saw the defender remain slightly flat-footed as his side suffered a surprise defeat. He would end the game as a makeshift centre-forward – assisting a goal with a flick-on.

Evidently, after such a long period without games, it will take Katic more than five starts to recover a sharpness that may prevent such positional errors.

The Croatian is never going to be a player to replace Connor Goldson in a stylistic sense. For some time there has been concern that his ability on the ball is not at the level required of a Rangers centre-back.

Nonetheless, despite the caveat of a lack of playing time and small sample size, his statistics throw up some encouraging themes. Compared to other centre-backs in the Croatian top-flight.

He leads the way in aerial duels, averaging over 15 per game. A win rate to this point of 64.29% is slightly down from his career-best 2018/19 total of 67.5%.

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In terms of overall defensive duels, his success rate stands at 88.24% - well up from his 18/19 total of 67.1%.

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Katic also tops the recovery and counterpressing recovery charts.

A recovery as defined by Wyscout is: "Any action that ends a possession of the opposing team and starts a possession for the current team."

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The 16.27 recoveries per 90 is also ahead of Katic's 18/19 total – which stood at 14.32.

As aforementioned, passing is not Katic’s selling point. He ranks 42nd on progressive passes, defined as: "A pass that moves the ball considerably forward" – dependent on the location of the passer.

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Furthermore, Katic is yet to make a deep completion - "A pass (excluding crosses) that was received in a 20-meter radius from the opponent goal line."

His offensive duel rate looks good on the surface – attempting the highest number of any centre-back in the division – but that number has a success rate of under 30%.

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That stat is explained by his high number of attempted progressive runs and 0.81 dribbles (Going past an opponent instead of just carrying the ball). He is only successful on one out of every three dribbles, however.

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Clearly, Katic’s favoured method of progression is to carry the ball and play a simple pass.

Presumably, Katic will be focusing on games before developing attributes. And a decision on his Rangers future will not be made on any early season findings.

Early signs suggest that Katic must still improve as a passer to seriously stake his claim at Rangers in the future.