Philippe Clement has offered a ray of Rangers injury hope after he revealed that Leon Balogun’s injury isn’t looking as bad as first feared.
The Nigerian was drafted into the backline in place of Robin Propper for the Boxing Day trip to Paisley as Clement rotated his already scarce centre back options in a bid to keep them fit, with John Souttar and Neraysho Kasanwirjo ruled out longer term. However, his fears were realised when Balogun pulled up inside 20 mins, appearing to hurt his Achilles while chasing Tolosi Olusanya. He managed to dispossess the St Mirren striker, but immediately hit the deck and signalled to the bench he was done.
Propper was then thrown on unexpectedly and endured a tough night In Paisley as the Buddies hit a last gasp winner. Dujon Sterling was already filling in at centre back and the same duo will likely have to start against Motherwell on Sunday and fans are keen to see at least one new centre back signed in January to boost the body count in that area of the pitch.
However, the Belgian was cautiously optimistic over Balogun’s prognosis. While a scan is required before there’s a timeframe on his return, there is now some hope that he could be invovled sooner rather than later, if not against the Steelmen then in contention for the Old Firm derby cash with Celtic on January 2.
“We don’t know anything about the timeframe yet,” Clement told Sky Sports. “It looks, for the moment, less serious than we thought at first, so he’s going to have a scan today and then we will have more information.
“Not only John, but also Nana (Kasanwirjo) is not available any more but we need to find solutions. What we did with Dujon playing there, he played a really good game also in that way, only the mistake at the end. The rest of the game was good. So we need to find solutions and we need to find solutions as a squad to solve these problems. That’s part of being in football.”