Sometimes injuries can be a blessing in disguise.
Hear me out with this one. If it wasn’t for the absence of Filip Helander, Leon Balogun and Niko Katic, Jack Simpson would never have been afforded the run of games that he is currently getting and something that will only stand him in good stead going forwards in his Rangers career.
He just needs to calm down.
In his first few appearances he has been too keen to engage opposition strikers when his chances of winning possession are limited, think about the second-half chance he gave to Odsonne Edouard or the way that Jay Emmanuel-Thomas spun him a couple of times in the first-half against Livingston the other night.
The problems he’s had are all easily rectified, that he eventually realised that JET is a unit of a man but not actually that good a footballer meant that he was playing to his strengths not the striker’s, he let him turn and didn’t dive in, because he was never going to outrun him.
Simpson needs to get into the gym with Katic too, the basics are there but he needs to be stronger, that Kris Ajer was able to easily hold him off before getting a free header for Celtic’s equaliser tells it’s own story but again, these things are easier to develop than what he is good at already.
Vital Rangers Goal of the Season
Defoe v Livingston
Roofe v Standard Liege
Jack v Kilmarnock
Tavernier v Dundee United
His distribution from the back was outstanding against Livingston, clipped diagonal passes over the defence, flat through balls that broke Livi’s defensive lines and balls into space for auxiliary left-back Joe Aribo to run onto – we were given a glimpse of what he is capable of in possession and the reason we signed him in the first place.
There is a long way to go before he can realistically claim to threaten his senior team-mates for a starting role but there were fans that wrote off Helander and Connor Goldson once upon a time, not heard them for a while mind….