Rangers have been given a bit of an injury boost after Ross McCausland’s blow against Motherwell was revealed as a lot less bad than feared and the Northern Ireland winger trained and prepared to fly out to Portugal with the rest of the squad.
After the initial foul by Ireland’s Dan Casey, McCausland was seen rushing down the tunnel in rage, with manager Philippe Clement none too happy about the Motherwell defender’s tackle either.
It was stated McCausland was unable to walk easily after the challenge.
But only a couple of days later the boy is back in training suggesting the initial reaction was a bit wide of the mark and he’s roughly-speaking ok.
We’re not so sure he’s completely fit to feature in Lisbon, but he’d be very likely to be on the bench at least.
But the good news either way is that’s one less on the injury list now, bringing the unavailables down from 7 to 6, and that is at least something.
That’s now ‘just’ Dowell, Cantwell, Danilo, Sima, Cortes and Matondo that appear to be the players currently-sidelined from duty, which, while some of these are very useful players, maybe isn’t as bad now as it was a week ago when McCausland appeared to be among them.
If we spin it positively, that’s 6 definitively injured total of a squad of 34, and that’s half decent.
The other three were the time-managed Lawrence, Jack and Roofe, who are all running/match fit to varying degrees but can’t be used in every match, a long way indeed from that.
But it means that overall, manager Philippe Clement now has around 28 senior players fit generally-speaking, even if not all can be used match-on-match.
That, when we look at those numbers, isn’t really that bad.
And for those asking, no, we haven’t included Zak Lovelace in this group, he’s yet to make the step up to being a regular on the bench on match days, unlike the likes of Rice, Fraser, Wright, and Yfeko.
So, it’s not quite so bad, is it?