Rangers have been dealt a massive title blow with the news that Danilo will require surgery on his injured knee and be out for the long-term.
The 24-year old, signed for a reported £6m, walked off the Tynecastle pitch himself with a limp but the incident seemed more of a normal football collision rather than one that would need immediate attention and join the ever growing injury list.
According to a report in The Sun though, Rangers could be without Danilo for up to four months after an operation to repair his damaged medial collateral ligament (MCL) and surely now, manager Philippe Clement has to make a move for a striker in the transfer window.
Rangers in Danilo surgery blow but prognosis doesn’t add up
Looking at the injury itself, the recovery time suggested indicates that a grade three MCL tear has been highlighted on an MRI scan, however, this is where things don’t add up.
You can see in the video that Danilo posted on social media that the outside of his right knee gets clattered causing the inside, where the MCL is, to be overstretched but at full speed it looks relatively innocuous.
Rangers replaced Danilo with Kemar Roofe a good few minutes after the injury occurred, but not straight away and not on a stretcher, he didn’t require any help either.
He was sprinting and changing direction without any visible issues, certainly not the signs and symptoms of a grade three MCL tear.
Walking and weight bearing should have been extremely painful.
The most likely scenario is a bad grade two tear where surgery is needed which means that Rangers would be missing Danilo for two, not four months, if everything goes well.
What Rangers do now could be season defining
What this does though, is open the door for someone else to be brought to Ibrox and forces the board’s hand to back Philippe Clement in January when previously the might have waited until the summer.
Cyriel Dessers has started scoring goals at the right time and Kemar Roofe has gradually been reintroduced into the first-team, the temptation to give him more minutes now will be a strong one to resist.
Either way, with Roofe out of contract at the end of the season, Rangers would have had to strengthen up front at some point anyway, now though, with Danilo out, that need is even greater.
This is the sort of mistake that has been made in the past when Alfredo Morelos was the only option, and with momentum starting to swing in our favour, it can’t be made again.
