Rangers hit with new injury blow as Oscar Cortes ruled out long term | OneFootball

Rangers have not had their injury problems to seek the past few years, with it all starting with Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s injury epidemic at Ibrox when the entire defence was unavailable.

Michael Beale had to deal with it too, and now Philippe Clement, who promised to fix it, finds it has only marginally improved and Rangers still suffer losing players far too often for far too long.

And the latest breaking news is that Clement has confirmed Oscar Cortes, expected to be out for yet another month, is likely to miss potentially the rest of the calendar year with a ‘longer term’ injury.

We can’t quite fathom why Clement mismanaged this guy so badly, first putting him on Killie’s terrible surface while protecting Kemar Roofe from it, then bringing him straight back in from the cold (he did the same with Danilo) then shoving him back out for the second half when he clearly wasn’t fit.

And now the Colombian is out long term for an unspecified time which could be into months, and potentially a 2025 return.

We admit this is not all on Clement – the lad is evidently made from glass, and is very, very prone to injury – unfortunately, despite his clear talent, Rangers are obligated to purchase next summer unless there’s a clause regarding any injury problems.

Rangers, as good as the kid is, can’t afford to waste another £4.5M like we did on Mohamed Diomande, but unless that get out clause is there, it’s £9M total down the drain.

Which definitely doesn’t point to Philippe Clement improving Rangers’ trading model much at all.

We sold only a few players last summer – Goldson, Lammers, Wright, McCrorie and Cantwell, and we didn’t make very much from that.

And it does feel like Rangers are spending and not generating, which in almost a year of Philippe Clement, hasn’t changed much at all. It’s actually got worse because Michael Beale was able to earn a lot more summer 2023 than Clement has.

But this gets away from the point – Cortes won’t be an option for a long time, and that appears to rob Rangers of yet another winger long term.