Rangers pair Jordan Jones and George Edmundson stupidly broke lockdown, Steven Gerrard breaks his silence and we do too…
There’s just something about footballers and breaking lockdown restrictions. It can’t just be that everyone is doing it and only they are high profile enough that we actually talk about it, this isn’t happening so frequently with other sports or entertainment figures. From the early days of Manchester City’s Kyle Walker inviting round some hookers to his house, for a round of Monopoly I’m sure, to Celtic’s Boli Bolingoli flying to COVID infested Spain and back again.
Now, alas, it’s Rangers turn to have players connected do something objectively stupid. Jordan Jones and George Edmundson attended a “private gathering” outside their house on Sunday. The club were, thankfully, quick to act by suspending both indefinitely and forcing them to quarantine for 14 days – but this whole debacle should never even have occurred.
Of course, it is good that Rangers were savvy enough to act fast and it definitely seems to have won them praise from the SFA. There is literally zero excuse for anyone breaking the lockdown restrictions we all have to suffer through, but it’s infinitely more damning when high profile players such as Jones and Edmundson try it on.
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What were they thinking? This is especially stupid from Jones who only just worked up enough favour in the gaffer’s eyes to make it into the first team, after a year’s hard graft. Now he’s out on his ear again and misses his Northern Ireland duty too, for what? What an unbelievable waste. Professional footballers are not known for their intellectual accumen, but this is a new level of daft.
Nonetheless, it seems Gerrard and the club are still not completely closing the door on messrs Jones and Edmundson having a future, even if distant, at Ibrox. He had this quoted by the Scottish Sun;
"“They have also badly let down their team-mates and the supporters of the club.They will be punished and dealt with internally.The important thing from my point of view is we draw a line under that.I don’t want to be sitting here kicking them even more. They are obviously feeling really down.They are apologetic and remorseful. They are full of regret and they will regret this for quite some time.They have been suspended in the short term and we have spoken to them since the event.The next time we speak to them is when they come off suspension, after their isolation period.”"
Sounds to me like it’s not necessarily the end, though a lengthy period of self-reflection and, again, working back into favor with the gaffer and fans is absolutely essential. The former might be possible, the latter will be a far greater challenge.
This season, of all seasons, when it finally clicks and Rangers start to assert their superiority on the rest of the League and in Europe, this negative publicity could and should so easily have been avoided. Instead of sitting back and being part of history, as the Gers seek to cement a record 55th title, these couple of prats decide to flush any good will down the toilet and it won’t soon be forgotten.
Whether, of course, they ever wear a Light Blue shirt again remains to be seen. For now, let’s hope that Rangers turn to have players do something reprehensibly dumb is over and clearly heads will prevail.