Sunderland have confirmed that Rangers loanee Jordan Jones is heading back to Ibrox following their exit from the EFL League One playoffs [Sunderland AFC Twitter].
Jones joined The Black Cats in January after a disappointing first half of the season with the Gers.
Although he scored a fine goal at Motherwell in September, he’d made just four appearances before he and George Edmundson breached Covid regulations in November and were handed substantial SFA bans.
The move to the Stadium of Light was intended to provide him with regular game time and a chance to show Steven Gerrard that he has enough quality to succeed back at Rangers.
The spell in the North East was a mixed one, though.
Jones received plenty of praise early on and scored high-quality goals against Crewe and Portsmouth.
However, ultimately, his final tally of three goals and four assists from 21 appearances is a little underwhelming.
Crucially for Sunderland, they failed for the third season running to escape the third tier, bowing out of the playoffs at the semi-final stage at the weekend with a 3-2 aggregate loss to Lincoln City.
They won the second leg 2-1 as Jones watched on an unused substitute but it wouldn’t prove to be enough to progress.
The Black Cats wasted little time in terms of confirming their squad list for 2021/22 and on Tuesday evening, they announced that Jones and fellow loanees Dion Sanderson and Jake Vokins were returning to their parent clubs.
The Northern Ireland international previously stated that he would hold talks with Gerrard this summer [Daily Record] but ahead of those discussions, his future is unclear.
He’s contracted until the summer of 2023 but there’ll be plenty of competition for places at Ibrox next season and a number of English Championship clubs have reportedly already expressed interest in his signature [TEAMtalk].
In other news, a high-profile European club are reportedly eyeing a swoop for a Rangers star.
