It has been confirmed what Ibrox Noise reported to you the past few months – Tom Lawrence will not play again this season for Rangers, and Kemar Roofe has unsurprisingly joined him and also will 95% not play again.
The Wales international has had a horrific first season at Ibrox – good stats and promising performances, but injury last year has led to complications and sadly the former Derby man now has to go under the knife again, and won’t be seen till next season at the earliest.
Roofe has serious complications, and is to see a specialist, and while it’s not 100% confirmed he’s out for the campaign, it’s close to that and the chances are practically zero we’ll see him in the shirt before next season.
It’s not what Rangers fans wanted to hear, and it raises deep and worrying questions of Rangers’ medical procedures. We certainly accepted Michael Beale’s theory about why these injuries were happening, but that doesn’t exactly help them stop.
And now we’ve definitively lost another two assets till next season at the earliest suggests these issues aren’t going away any time soon, even although there was some positive news with the return of John Souttar and Ridvan Yilmaz.
Intriguingly there remains no mention whatsoever of Filip Helander, whose injury issues are now in legend – we imagine there’s no positive update and he’ll leave come the summer, with the contract expiring.
But the two attackers Lawrence and Roofe are looking like busted flushes right now – Rangers cannot rely on either of them and sure could have done with both of them on Sunday.
This is what the blight is costing us, players of high quality like both of these guys. We’re not saying those injuries cost us the cup, but look at how Chelsea have struggled without eleven players+. Rangers are no different. We remain missing practically an entire XI, and few teams in the world could cope with that.
So we wish Tom and Kemar well, and can only cross our fingers vaguely that they’re available next season. With our generally poor luck, probably not.