As is now widely-known, Ben Godfrey misses the next four weeks of football. Rangers, who already had no defence whatsoever, now have even less as the summer loan from Atalanta sits out the next month.
This now means Olwethu Makanya, Emmanuel Fernandez and Clinton Nsiala are Rangers’ only CBs, both hosting Hibernian on the 9th and travelling to Poland to face Jagiellonia Białystok this midweek.
The loss of Godfrey makes a ‘God-awful’ defence even worse, with Makhanya’s dire CV already a topic of much concern. And he’s the new boy at £3M.
Giovanni
Add the already-questionable Emmanuel Fernandez (likes a header in all fairness) and the hopeless Clinton Nsiala and Rangers’ options in the middle are right back to Giovanni Van Bronckhorst’s chaotic crisis of 2022.
Back then the loss of Connor Goldson in that first half, who many have likened Godfrey to, led to a rearguard of Ben Davies and Leon King.
Facing off against Darwin Nunez, Mo Salah and Firminho Rangers were in for a world of pain with those two muppets at the back. Lightning striking twice here?
And so it turned out, even if Gio ridiculously got the blame for it.
Well this isn’t much different now.
Thankfully we’re up against a rando Polish mob no one can pronounce far less have heard of, rather than the (formerly) mighty Liverpool, but this is not a Rangers off the back of Sevilla.
This is a borderline fourth-place Rangers in absolute purgatory.
Our defence now is:
A failed Peterborough League One reject who had a market value of £300,000 when Rangers spent £5M on him.
Some punter from the MLS who gets booked and red carded like it’s going out of fashion, while failing to be better than 10th in the MLS for any single defensive contribution.
And a kid formerly from Milan’s Primavera who’s been at Ibrox long enough for us to know he’s a dud and failed miserably on a loan at Westerlo.
To say this is crisis mode is a mild understatement and while our jury was out on Godfrey, he is the best defender we have. That says it all.
When your defence relies on Ben Godfrey, you know you’re sh*t out of luck.