Rangers Captain Lawrence Shankland Faces Four Months Out with Injury
Rangers have been dealt a hammer blow, with captain Lawrence Shankland facing up to four months out after tearing his hamstring – and surgery still on the table.
Manager Derek McInnes confirmed the 31-year-old has suffered a recurrence of the same injury the pair endured together at Hearts last season, when Shankland was sidelined for nine weeks. This time, the damage is a 2cm tear, and the stakes are higher.
“He’s actually in London now,” McInnes explained, outlining how the striker is undergoing an ultrasound and follow-up scan as specialists decide whether to operate or let the muscle heal naturally, as it did in January. Go under the knife, and Shankland could be out an extra three to four weeks. Skip surgery, and the risk of another repeat rises.
Either way, Rangers will be without their main marksman for a significant spell.
Shankland had just begun to look like himself in a blue shirt. Four goals in 10 appearances this season, three of them in his two games before the injury, with decisive strikes in wins at Aberdeen and Falkirk. On Saturday, against Motherwell at Ibrox, he lasted only a short time before pulling up and making way for Ryan Naderi, who went on to score the only goal in a 1-0 win.
It felt like the start of a run. Instead, it may be the pause button on his Rangers story.
McInnes admitted the timing is brutal. “He was starting to find his stride here and had obviously scored some important goals for us,” he said. “Best case scenario three months, probably worst-case scenario in terms of time would be about four months.”
The impact stretches well beyond Ibrox. Shankland will also miss Scotland’s Nations League campaign this autumn, with new head coach Sebastien Pocognoli preparing for home-and-away ties against North Macedonia, Slovenia and Switzerland from late September to mid-November. Shankland has seven goals in 22 caps, three of them this year, and had been an important part of the national squad’s attacking options.
For Rangers, the fixture list offers no sympathy. St Mirren visit Ibrox on Wednesday in the Scottish Premiership. Then comes Celtic at home in the League Cup, Celtic away in the league, and the first international break of the season. October brings five more matches, November three, December six. That is a lot of football without the man McInnes built his forward line around.
And Shankland is not the only absentee.
Winger Daisuke Yokota, who came off the bench against Motherwell, will miss the St Mirren game with a groin problem. There is at least one positive: left-back Tuur Rommens is back in training and could return before the end of the month.
The real headache, though, is up front. With Youssef Chermiti already ruled out for a lengthy period after suffering anterior cruciate ligament damage against Hibernian last month, McInnes is suddenly without his two leading strikers.
“Having [Shankland] and Youssef out, two guys that guarantee you goals at Premiership level, there’s no doubt it’s a blow for us,” the Rangers boss admitted.
The door now swings open for others. Naderi, who punished a calamitous error from Motherwell goalkeeper Alex Paulsen to roll the ball into an empty net at the weekend, is one of them. McInnes has hinted the powerful forward could be in line for a call-up with the Czech Republic. The question is whether he can turn honest graft into Shankland-level numbers.
So far, the evidence is mixed. Naderi scored three times in 11 games last season after arriving in January, though two of those came in an 8-0 Scottish Cup demolition of Queen’s Park. This term, he has three goals in eight appearances – one fewer than Shankland’s four in 10.
The minutes tell a clearer story. Since joining Rangers, Naderi has averaged a goal every 189 minutes. Shankland, stretching back to the start of last season at Hearts, finds the net every 146 minutes. Only one striker at the club matches that sort of efficiency: Bojan Miovski.
The North Macedonia international, a proven scorer from his Aberdeen days, averages a goal every 148 minutes. Yet he has struggled to nail down a consistent run in the side, shuffled in and out as McInnes juggled options and bedding-in periods.
Now, the manager may have no choice but to lean on him.
Former Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday, speaking on BBC Sportsound, underlined how costly Shankland’s absence could be in games like Motherwell. “If Lawrence Shankland was on the pitch throughout, he’d be walking away with a couple of goals,” he argued, pointing to the volume of chances Rangers created in what should have been a far more comfortable victory.
The spotlight will also fall on big-money signing Kevin Kelsy. The Venezuelan forward came off the bench against Motherwell and had the perfect chance to mark his debut with a goal, only to clip the crossbar when composure was needed.
Thirteen goals in his last 46 games – roughly one every 190 minutes – suggest he is not a pure penalty-box predator in the Shankland mould. That does not mean he cannot grow into the role, but the numbers underline the scale of the gap Rangers must bridge.
“It’s not an ideal scenario,” former goalkeeper Cammy Bell said on the BBC’s Scottish Football Podcast. He stressed that Rangers would have preferred to give Kelsy time to adjust to Scottish football, to the demands of Ibrox, to the scrutiny. “He’s not going to get that now,” Bell added. “You’d think Kelsy is going to be the one that will have to step up to the plate and score important goals because you can’t rely on Shankland for now.”
The pressure is real, and it is immediate. Naderi has momentum. Miovski has the record. Kelsy has the price tag and the expectation. Between them, they must now carry a team suddenly stripped of its two most reliable scorers.
Rangers were “good value” for their win over Motherwell, as the cliché goes, but with Shankland watching on, the margin for error in front of goal has shrunk. With Celtic looming twice and a relentless calendar ahead, the next few weeks will reveal whether this squad can turn opportunity into goals – or whether Shankland’s injury becomes the defining twist of their season.
