It is time for Rangers to bid farewell to Filip Helander after Michael Beale confirmed the Swedish defender isn’t expected to return to action till late April, at the most optimistic.

The 29-year-old defender, who has missed the whole season through injury, misses another three months, and while he’s been blessed with two happy and healthy baby twins during his absence, his use to the club has become completely redundant now.

We do, at Ibrox Noise, say all this with a heavy heart – we love Fil because he’s a top defender, and you don’t play for Sweden at national level in major championships and qualifying if you’re not good enough.

But in 4 years Helander has managed just a ridiculous 70+ appearances, which is a desperate return on £3M investment, and even Michael Beale confirmed contract discussions are a non-thing given his injury history.

Helander and Rangers, sadly, need to part company, the lad is never going to be fit for this club and it’ll be another classic case of a player leaving Rangers then never having an injury again.

It’s a shame, because we could really have used him, but given we’ll be lucky to even have him in time for the Split, it seems there’s just no point keeping him at Ibrox and we’d resort to mutual consent at this point.

Of course, his contract expires this summer, and he can be very fortunate it didn’t expire last, because he would never have been offered a new deal. This summer any new deal just isn’t going to happen, because his whole Rangers career has been beset with constant injuries.

A new deal makes no financial sense to the club, and would be purely sentimental. Unlike Ianis Hagi, who had been completely fit his whole time at the club before that injury, when the Romanian got his new deal, Helander has been stop start and hasn’t been able to contribute to justify a new deal.

And would probably just get injured again.

No, we love the lad but it doesn’t make sense, so it’s a goodbye from us, sadly.