Michael Beale shares why Rangers were ‘Robbed’ of players for pre-season clash v Hoffenheim
Rangers were without “three or four” first-team players for the pre-season clash with Hoffenheim due to a sickness bug, says Michael Beale.
Leon Balogun and youngster Johnly Yfeko were named as the starting centre-backs with no sign of Ben Davies or John Souttar in the squad for the final friendly of the summer.
But when asked pre-game about their absences, the boss revealed there was a bug in the camp and several players didn’t make the trip for the game as a result.
“Unfortunately, we had a little bit of a sickness bug which has robbed us of three or four players and we had to make the choice whether they travelled with the group or stayed back.
“So, three or four have stayed back.”
Bad timing
Rangers have had some really bad timing with this bug as the manager looks to integrate his new squad together to find some rhythm before the first game of the season.
The next time this squad touch the pitch will be the opening SPFL game of the campaign when they face Kilmarnock, and that isn’t ideal that we haven’t seen Beale’s strongest team start together once in pre-season.
The performance against Olympiacos recently was really poor and showed that we’re not quite in the right shape despite the new season basically being upon us at this point.
Illnesses will only hinder us further, although the hope will surely be that they can recover and train in time before the game.
It was a chance for others to impress Beale, but the likelihood is that he knows what he wants to see next week and he’ll need some players to return in order to get it.
In other Rangers news, player jets out for talks to discuss permanent Ibrox exit.