Rangers have finally addressed the years-long injury crisis at Ibrox… by rather evading the topic and offering absolutely no reason why it’s been happening.
Speaking at the AGM, we obviously know that Tom Taylor is our new Head of Performance and he will be tasked with players’ health, diet, fitness etc, but new (ish) manager Philippe Clement had no explanation for why it’s been taking place.
Being that he is still fairly new, this is sort of understandable, but those inside the club will know in part what is happening and that isn’t being made public.
Clement tried to placate fans:
“I spoke about that, it’s case by case. We have to go and look at what can be the cause and it’s several things. The human body, not enough training, a lot of other things. That’s why, also, it was important to get a really good director of performance into the building. We have a lot of good staff in the building working really hard with the players.”
In short, he conjectures a multiple of factors but doesn’t really have an answer:
“I have seen the players working hard, also the injured players, to do their best. We found somebody who is really good at making players better, who had problems before. Tom Taylor is really good and comes into the club from Brighton, a club with a good reputation the last couple of years at getting players in at not the highest prices. Also, players who had injuries before, but are fit and good at Brighton.”
We just hope Taylor is good at his job!
But Clement sounds slightly like Mick Beale with the next one:
“I had this experience at my other clubs, that the players were more fit than they were before. So we are going to work in a good way together to make these things work better here at Rangers. So I can make a promise around that. Give us a few months to make everything better and you will see much fewer injuries, I can promise that to everyone.”
A promise is a big deal to Rangers fans – it’s a bold claim to make, and it puts a rod on Clement’s back. He’s putting his own reputation on the line to claim the injuries will go down.
We cross our fingers his own trust and faith in this is not misplaced.