The truth about Rangers star’s ‘confirmed January return’…

Contrary to misleading headlines recently claiming Steven Gerrard wants on-loan midfielder Greg Docherty back this January, we felt at Ibrox Noise we should clean up the guff and discuss the truth behind this attention-grabbing story.

As we know, Docherty and his new manager decided his best move was a loan to Shrewsbury in light of the fact he wasn’t expected to make too many starts under Gerrard. The 22-year old holding midfielder has done very well indeed for the League One outfit with 3 goals and 10 appearances during his time south of the border.

Indeed, his form alerted the media to hype him up and discuss his future, while Ibrox Noise had already committed an article expressing our conviction he’s a future Rangers captain and Scotland international, his comments about Gerrard’s position on him have been wildly abused and headlines lacking accuracy have surfaced claiming Gerrard has ‘confirmed’ he wants Docherty back in January.

This is absolutely patently false.

Docherty has stated clearly:

“The manager has been very clear that he wants me to come back, and he is very keen for me to come back. So, I’ll take it game by game up until January and see where things are at, and if I’m here for the season then that’s fine. Whatever it takes to make a real success of my Rangers career, I’ll do it.”

Steven Gerrard sees enough in Docherty that he probably realises he got that judgement call wrong. It happens. But the ex-Hamilton player simply states that while Stevie does want him back, there is absolutely no verification anywhere that the date of his return will be this winter. Things will simply be assessed at that point, as they always are with various players whether loans or not just like they similarly are during the summer.

At Ibrox Noise we hope it is a January return, we consider young Greg one of our finest midfielders and a great prospect – he was outstanding in our opinion last season, despite the well-documented struggles of partnering Graham Dorrans from March onwards.

But the man himself has only conjectured that he could return in January – because, of course, any loan can go back to the parent club at any time, given they own them.

Nothing as yet has been set in stone and Docherty could well stay down south for the season.

We’ll see when he actually does come back.