Surprise and confusion after presumed Rangers exit…reverses…

Rangers’ official site has sprung a surprise by dropping a significant hint that ‘departed’ Gareth McAuley is in fact still a Rangers player.

Despite his contract being reported to be over 13 days ago, Rangers have referred to him as a present player in concert with a report over his involvement in Northern Ireland’s recent European qualifiers.

His mention here does throw a spanner in the works of the notion he’s been freed, despite that contract being over on the 1st of June.

It does add up to an interesting twist – does Steven Gerrard intend to keep McAuley on in some capacity at the club? Has he already been offered a new deal as a player?

There are three possible scenarios to suggest what’s going on here:

• A pure gaffe by the digital team who forgot his contract expired.
• A polite reference to his being a recently-freed Rangers player, and still worthy of comment.
• A surprise and subtle hint that McAuley will be staying at Ibrox next season.

Either way, it’s added a touch of intrigue. We would also have to argue that it can’t be number two because Lassana Coulibaly has been called up for Mali’s provisional ACN squad (there’s a whole pullaver there) and he wasn’t mentioned in the same page despite apparently being returned to Angers so your guess is currently as good as ours, folks.

Is McAuley one you’d want to hold onto?