Sky Sports: Rangers allow player to jet out of UK for Christmas
Rangers have allowed Nikola Katic to return to Croatia for Christmas with the defender unavailable to play any time soon due to a knee injury, according to Sky Sports.
Katic, 24, has not played all season after suffering a rupturued anterior cruciate ligament in training over the summer.
In July, the Scottish Sun quoted the defender as saying he hopes to be back in action by the end of this year.
However, with Katic reportedly heading to his home nation of Croatia for the Christmas period, that seems very unlikely.
Rangers really could do with him back
Steven Gerrard has been close to a selection crisis at centre-back in recent weeks thanks to Filip Helander testing positive for COVID-19 and Leon Balogun’s head injury.
Fortunately, those two setbacks did not overlap and Gerrard always had one of the two to name alongside Connor Goldson at centre-back.
However, it just shows that Gerrard does have limited options in the middle of his defence until Katic is back and available for selection again.
We hope it’s not too far away now because the one-time Croatia international has shown himself to be a major asset to the squad in the past.
According to stats by Wyscout, the defender averaged 5.13 interceptions, 15.66 recoveries and 4.63 clearances per 90 minutes of Scottish Premiership football last season while he also won 74.1 per cent of defensive duels and 61.1 per cent of aerial duels.
Katic can be a defensive colossus for Rangers on his day and hopefully, once he has fully recovered from this injury, he can return no worse a player than he was last season.
These types of injuries can leave lasting impacts on players so this break in Croatia might work out well for the centre-back so he can return to Glasgow in the New Year ready to push on and stake his claim for his spot back in the side.
In other Rangers news, fans were blown away by this player’s display for the Gers Colts side.