Michael Beale has today delivered a mixed bag for Rangers fans with varying news on injury progress, but unfortunately none of the updates promises imminent returns for any player currently side-lined.
Ianis Hagi, Kemar Roofe, Tom Lawrence, John Lundstram, John Souttar and Ridvan Yilmaz are the six players currently out or recovering, with the newest addition being the stricken Lundstram who pulled up in the last outing.
Beale’s comments didn’t really sound too precise or optimistic on any of them bar Roofe and Hagi:
He said:
“Kemar is back in training, Ianis has had an extra week as well, John Souttar is no nearer and is training in isolation as is Tom, their situations are dragging out a little bit. John (Lundstram) won’t be available this weekend, hopefully back for Livi and definitely back for the cup final. Ridvan will probably be another three or four weeks.”
The situation with Roofe is he is (once again) fit and ready but we can’t tell how much of that is lip service from the manager and if he’ll actually be involved with the weekend’s squad. Same goes for Hagi – he might have made a cameo recently but hasn’t been involved since and it’s been slow progress.
As for Souttar, Lawrence, Ridvan and Lundstram, none of them are available, with the former two taking longer, as we already knew. There are slim chances neither of them will play again this season, but time will tell on that one and we’d hope to be wrong, while Ridvan is suffering ‘7-10 days’ syndrome after the original estimate of three weeks around 3 weeks ago was a bit off and he’s up to another month out.
Lundstram got better news from the scan, but he is side-lined anyway for a little while but, according to the manager, will ‘definitely’ be back for the final.
A mixed bag of updates but the biggest pity seems to be that none of the players mentioned will be ‘definitely’ available this weekend, even if the manager was more optimistic about Roofe and Hagi. Maybe those two will make it on the bench but the other four definitely won’t.
And no, we’ve not wasted our time even talking about Filip Helander who is now rent-free on the treatment table.