Rangers loanee Ross McCrorie is experiencing more woes in the EFL with Portsmouth.
The 21-year-old joined the English club on a season-long loan in the summer, as he was keen to get playing time in order to develop his game.
It was a concept Steven Gerrard agreed with. The Gers boss said that although he had ‘big plans’ for the Scotland youth international, he could see he was ‘desperate’ to play regularly and agreed that a loan could be beneficial [BBC Sport].
However, the player has suffered setback after setback since he left Ibrox.
There was the red card on debut and the resulting suspension which triggered a spell out of the team, before positional chopping and changing between central midfield and right-back. Then, more recently, injury problems.
A hamstring tweak kept him sidelined for a few weeks in November and then when he thought he was back on track and set for a run in the side, he sustained a more serious version of the same injury, right before Christmas.
As part of his rehabilitation process, he joined up with the Gers squad for the winter trip to Dubai, before returning to Pompey on the verge of full fitness.
Yet, since then, he’s not played a minute of competitive action. Kenny Jackett’s side have been in fine form, at one stage winning five games on the spin to march up the league table.
That’s proved bad news on an individual level for McCrorie, though, who has suffered from the old ‘never change a winning team’ mantra.
He’s watched from the bench for the last four matches as an unused substitute.
At this point, he’s made just 15 appearances for his adopted side and with only another 15 regular-season league games remaining, even if he returned to the side for tomorrow’s fixture against Shrewsbury Town, he’ll still finish someway off his 40-50 game target.
There’s no suggestion he would have played week in week out for the Gers this season, but he’s on track to play fewer games for his loan club than he did at Ibrox across 2018/19 (31).
McCrorie has had very little luck since pushing through his move south of the border, and at this point, may well be wishing he’d hadn’t left at all.
