Rangers have been given another massive boost after Nigeria boss Gernot Rohr appeared to concede defeat on the trio of players re: the Old Firm after confirming he’s received a call from Glasgow on the matter.
The German boss of Balogun, Bassey and Aribo had hoped to have all his available players at his disposal come the Africa Cup of Nations which begins in earnest in a couple of months, but this would mean Rangers losing three stars for a crucial period in the season, and in particular, the Celtic match on the 2nd.
But it appears there’s been a compromise and Rangers will have all three for that one albeit losing them thereafter for their international duties.
He said:
“Somebody called me from Glasgow already they have the derby Glasgow Rangers vs Celtic on the second or third of January if we can let the players play.”
Now given Celtic have no Nigerian players that we know if, this was clearly a Rangers call.
But it gets better:
“We have a lot of problems to prepare the team but I think we will have most of our players at least ten days before.”
There’s where he concedes defeat.
Rohr is trying to be reasonable – he wants all his best players of course, but the ACN is deeply inconvenient schedule-wise and Rohr knows this, so wants to keep club bosses as happy as he can to avoid any conflict and future aggro.
We may lose these players for a lot of January, but we should have them for the derby.
Good.