Tag: Rangers

Jordan Jones and George Edmundson are unlikely to play again this year after the Rangers duo were handed hefty seven-match bans as punishment for breaching Covid-19 rules.

The pair broke strict government guidelines when they attended an indoor house party earlier this month.

Northern Ireland winger Jones, 26, and 23-year-old English defender Edmundson were given two-week club suspensions and were also issued with fixed penalties by police officers called out to break up the early-hours get-together in Glasgow’s west end.

Now the Scottish Football Association has also taken action by charging the pair over the incident.

The seven-match bans mean Jones and Edmundson, who are not in Rangers’ Europa League squad, will not be free to return to domestic action for Steven Gerrard’s team until the December 30 clash with St Mirren.

But both players face an uphill struggle to win over their furious manager.

Jones’ part in this latest incident comes after he spent much of last season out of action with a knee injury sustained while he got himself sent off for a reckless challenge on Celtic’s Moritz Bauer in the opening Old Firm clash of the campaign.

Edmundson, meanwhile, has struggled to force his way past the likes of Connor Goldson, Filip Helander and Leon Balogun to claim a regular spot in his manager’s line-up.

The party took place just hours after Rangers had beaten Kilmarnock at Rugby Park on November 1. Neither player was involved in the game but they were both due to report to training the following day.

However, they were ordered to stay away from the club’s Auchenhowie base after Ibrox bosses were informed of the illegal gathering.

Under Scottish Government rules at the time, residents of Glasgow were prohibited from socialising inside homes with those from another household.

Officers called out to break up the party discovered the Rangers duo and a number of other revellers inside the residential flat.

Gerrard later told the duo that they had “badly let down their team-mates and the supporters of the club” with their actions, while Jones was left out of the Northern Ireland squad for last week’s Euro 2020 play-off with Slovakia.

The SFA took action after issuing notices of complaint which accused the players of breaching the governing body’s disciplinary rules 24 and 77, which cover requirements to comply with Covid rules and the failure to act in the best interests of the game.

Steven Gerrard hailed a “big win” at Kilmarnock that answered some major questions but the Rangers boss insisted he would not look at the Scottish Premiership after his side went nine points clear.

James Tavernier’s 19th-minute penalty earned Gers a 1-0 victory and only their second Premiership win at Rugby Park in eight games.

Rangers had suffered three defeats at the Ayrshire venue in the previous two seasons and Gerrard was delighted to see his side hold out amid a spirited second-half show from the hosts.

“That was a big win, a win that we had to work hard for,” he said.

There were a lot of question marks in the build-up to this game, talk about how we’d failed miserably here before and lost after getting ourselves in front.

“Well, we got ourselves in front today and I thought we showed really good resilience and strength and a different side to Rangers.

“I’m extremely proud of the players’ performance and I thought we fully deserved the three points. So we answered those questions today but we’ve got to keep on doing that.

“I’ve got players in that dressing room now who will roll their sleeves up, show resilience and strength, put their bodies on the line.

Winning headers, stopping crosses – they are doing all the dirty side of the game that you need to do if you want to be successful.”

Celtic have two games in hand and there is no chance of Gerrard getting carried away as he searches for the first league title of his career.

“I won’t look at the league table,” he said. “I’ll analyse our performance and speak to the players after a bit of time off.

“This has been a tough week on the back of another big European game. Nobody mentions what we have to give on a Thursday night before we come to places like this.

“But it’s not the stage of the season to be looking at the league table.”

Rangers opened the scoring inside the first 20 minutes for the seventh time in eight league games as they imposed themselves on their opponents.

“We are Rangers, we always want to start in the best possible way,” Gerrard said.

We want to be aggressive. You saw that, we wanted to take the game to Kilmarnock.

“The players are buying into it. We tweaked the way we played here slightly. We didn’t want to overplay, we wanted to make Killie’s defenders as uncomfortable as possible by going a little bit more direct.

“The players have gone out again and carried the plan out superbly well. The only thing I’d say is ‘can we get that second goal and really take the game away from the opponents?’.”

Kilmarnock manager Alex Dyer felt his side’s second-half display was worthy of a point. The closest they came was when Allan McGregor stopped substitute Eamonn Brophy’s drilled free-kick.

Dyer said: “First half, we weren’t at the races. Especially the first 30 minutes. We got a bit more into it after that and ironed a few things out at half time.

“I think we showed them a bit too much respect at the start. But if you go hung-ho against them you will get picked off.

“It’s important to try and find a balance and we did that in the second half. I enjoyed it more and the players did too, because they had more of the ball and passed it better.”