Despite the fanfare of Ianis Hagi’s new contract, Rangers do not expect the Romanian playmaker truly back before mid-February, give or take, after Michael Beale confirmed a hopeful end of January/early February return.
The former Genk man has been out injured for around a year, in what was a truly awful ACLI in January, and his rehabilitation has been slow and painstaking, but it isn’t overly close to being over, with an absolute minimum of another 6 weeks out before he’s ready to stake any kind of claim for being in the matchday squad.
Michael Beale said:
“He’s in light training at the moment, unopposed. It’s a year loss, there’s a lot of muscle loss and things like that that he has to go through. If we can get him back for the start of February we’d be delighted.”
This is, in itself, optimistic-sounding. Beale himself even admitting that ‘if’ the club can get him back in around 6 weeks it would be fantastic, and hinting that that’s ahead of schedule in itself.
The big clue was ‘muscle loss’ – Hagi has a year of ‘withered’ muscle groups and deeply weakened physical presence thanks to inaction, and now that he’s in light training he has a tonne of work to restore the muscle and make himself closer to physically ready.
And even then he’s a year behind for match fitness – look at how Ryan Jack is still not quite there yet at his old levels after he too suffered around a year+ out due to shocking injury blight.
There’s hope for Hagi, but he’s still got a journey ahead of him, even if it’s the final stretch. It really has been a very nasty injury, and a tough rehab for the Romanian star – Rangers have missed a consistent playmaker in there since Joe Aribo left, with Alex Lowry unfavoured by Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Malik Tillman suffering inconsistency under the Dutch manager.
So having Hagi and Tillman plus Lowry in the future is decent depth for sure, but the Romanian still has a little bit to go before he’s ready to actually feature for Rangers.