If his fitness wasn’t in doubt, this wouldn’t even be a question. Filip Helander is, potentially, the best CB at the club when fully fit, unfortunately though, he hasn’t even been close to full fitness in the last 18 or so months.
He’s only made 60 appearances over three seasons, so far and it doesn’t look likely that he will add to that before his contract expires this summer.
Having come from Serie A and having international experience it’s fair to assume he commanded a large wage upon his arrival at Ibrox. This now looks like it’s money which could be spent better elsewhere, especially considering he just can’t seem to stay fit anymore.
Now twenty-nine, he should be in the peak of his powers but, sadly, that’s not how his Rangers career has panned out. Next to Goldson he was immense in the 55 season as Rangers broke the record for the least amount of goals conceded in an SPFL season.
With Rangers going into a rebuilding phase in the summer, sentiment is definitely not going to earn you a new deal and with the injury history it looks very unlikely Helander will be afforded another season to prove his fitness.
In that historic season he played twenty-two times and help the team keep thirteen clean sheets. He averaged 1.7 tackles per game and of seven average duels per game he won 68% of them including winning 70% of aerial duels! He also averaged 86% pass accuracy and only picked up two yellow cards in these games.
A defender with elite level positional awareness, which makes up for his lack of pace, it’s a real shame his spell at Ibrox has turned out the way it has.
With the current injury record, combined with his age and presumably high wage, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to give him a contract extension for next season.
What would you do though, would you give ‘Big Fil’ a new deal? Or would you let it expire and count him as an another ‘what could have been’ story?