Rangers Europa League opponents, Benfica, have been hit with an injury and isolation crisis ahead of the top of the table clash at Ibrox tomorrow evening, it’s not the first time in this campaign either.
The Scottish Sun has reported on Julian Weigl and Darwin Nunez – who created one and scored the equaliser in Portugal before the international break – both testing positive for coronavirus taking their absentee list up to eight, with Adel Taraabt also missing for the same reason.
Andrew McLean, a reporter for Radio Clyde, detailed the list of players that will be missing for Benfica on Twitter, needing just a few more to have a full team of stars that are unavailable.
Looks as if Benfica midfielder Adel Taraabt will also miss Thursday’s game with Rangers after a positive COVID test.
Darwin Nunez and Julian Weigl already out.
Nicolas Otamendi suspended after his red card.
André Almeida, Nuno Tavares, Todibo and Pedrinho all injured.
— Andrew Maclean (@_AndrewMaclean) November 24, 2020
There is still a couple of days to go before the game and the worry now will be that there are other positive tests in the group, where it might make Rangers chances of progressing to the knockout stages easier, the last thing we would want is our players to become affected too.
From day one we have said that it will be a matter of “when” and not “if” we have a crisis of our own to deal with but *touch wood* we have been relatively unaffected so far, and fingers will remain crossed that we can make it through the season in a similar manner – as nothing else looks like derailing our form anytime soon.