Rangers: Injury update, Motherwell match lineup and more
We look ahead to Rangers trip to Fir Park to take on Motherwell and consider the injury list and potential team lineup…
I don’t like midday games and I know I’m not alone in that. I’m not even sure what it is I particularly dislike about them – the fact you can easily forget the early kickoff time and miss it, the feeling that the players, professional athletes to a man, somehow are as fatigued and lazy as I am at that time, or perhaps something else – I just don’t like them. Traditional Saturday, 3pm, games were my bread and butter as a kid and Rangers were amazing back then so the change is subliminally resisted.
Well, this weekend, the Gers have the double whammy of a Sunday 12pm game at that ever-unchanging, ironmongery carbuncle Fir Park against Motherwell. Yippee.
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On the plus side, the Light Blues do go into the game in a bit of a decent position, all things considered. Top of the table by a landslide, undefeated, scoring goals for fun and keeping them out the other end as a side hobby. It’s a good time to be a Bear and it’s an especially good time to be playing Motherwell, second from bottom of the Premiership and only one point above the objectively atrocious Ross County.
It’s not all good news, of course, for Rangers. Injuries have been somewhat piling up which, as predicted earlier in the season, would be the key behind Steven Gerrard’s seemingly unending quest to add more players in the same positions across the board. 6 strikers, was it? And we only usually play one at a time.
Squad depth necessitated it, in a COVID year particularly, and we’re reaping the benefits as results, if not performances, have remained steady as you like. As for the Motherwell game, Gerrard gave a few updates on players who have been out, as quoted by the Glasgow Times;
"“Ryan Jack has returned to full training with the Rangers squad ahead of their clash with Motherwell this weekend as Scott Arfield steps up his rehabilitation from an ankle injury.Jack has not featured since the win over the Dons in November but has now rejoined Gerrard’s squad as he looks to return to action following a persistent knee issue.Fellow midfielder Scott Arfield is still a couple of weeks away from fitness but Kemar Roofe is set to rejoin the Light Blues ranks next week.Elsewhere, defender George Edmundson has been ruled out for at least three weeks and Niko Katic continues to make progress on the road to recovery from his cruciate knee ligament surgery.”"
I’m not sure there’s a greater proof of how much deeper our squad is this season than the fact we’ve not been playing without Scotty Arfield, arguably our most improved player, and you probably forgot he’s injured until this article. I know I did.
One interesting question will be, with Roofe out until next week, will Gerrard trust Cedric Itten with a start?
Jack and Edmundson, as we’ve discussed before, are on exceedingly thin ice with the club and support overall, so time off due to lack of fitness is timely to say the least. At least it appears Jack, who always puts in a shift to be fair, is in full training and will be available for selection. I would personally be surprised if he gets anywhere near the subs bench, but you never know.
One interesting question will be, with Roofe out until next week, will Gerrard trust Cedric Itten with a start? Since joining the Gers last summer, the Swiss has only managed 2 of them, which is surely not what he or the club had in mind at the time. His 3 goals and 1 assist in some 397 minutes of football is about in line with what we’ve got from fellow backup centre-forward Jermain Defoe. Decent, and better on average than Alfredo Morelos, but obviously not a gamble Gerrard has been quick to make.
Nonetheless, with Roofe well established as first choice striker, it seems like a good time to give Itten another chance to show what he can do and move himself up the food chain a bit. We won’t have Morelos forever, that much has been clear for some time and Defoe doesn’t have the minutes left in him to be more than a super sub.
In any case, Rangers can go into Sunday’s game with unlimited confidence and a squad more than capable of rolling over any team in Scotland, injuries, COVID or otherwise. That fact is exciting enough to get me up in time for kickoff, at least.