{"id":58547,"date":"2026-08-12T17:34:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T17:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/rangers-seek-striker-playing-with-fire-in-defence\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T17:34:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T17:34:15","slug":"rangers-seek-striker-playing-with-fire-in-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/rangers-seek-striker-playing-with-fire-in-defence\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers seek striker &#038; &#8216;playing with fire&#8217; in defence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Rangers are being &#8220;proactive&#8221; in seeking a new striker after Youssef Chermiti was ruled out long term, says manager Derek McInnes, who warned defensive injuries have left the club &#8220;playing with fire&#8221;.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Chermiti, 22, sustained an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/articles\/cwyrkkk1kzqo\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">anterior cruciate ligament injury<\/a> in Saturday&#8217;s defeat by Hibernian, shortly after McInnes confirmed a bid had been rejected for the Portugal Under-21 cap. Galatasaray have been linked with the former Everton player.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A specialist in London will be consulted, with a possible operation next week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Chermiti is joined on the sidelines by left-back Tuur Rommens, who has been ruled out for up to eight weeks with a groin problem suffered in the same game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McInnes, whose side will attempt to overturn a 2-1 first-leg deficit at home to Jagiellonia Bialystok in their Europa League third-round qualifier on Thursday, said of Chermiti: &#8220;Obviously, really disappointing for ourselves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Selfishly, he&#8217;s a big part of what we wanted to do this season and he&#8217;s obviously a talented boy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;For Youssef himself, obviously he&#8217;s very young. It&#8217;ll be difficult for him to accept and understand what&#8217;s happened to him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The only saving grace from our point of view as a club is the fact it&#8217;s happened in a transfer window and we&#8217;ve got the opportunity to react to that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The plan was for Youssef to stay in. Obviously it was a big number that was reportedly bid for him. I don&#8217;t know exactly what the figure was. Obviously the club rejected that. It&#8217;s neither here nor there now, to be honest. It&#8217;s done.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We are obviously looking at maybe strengthening that area of the pitch. We&#8217;re trying to be quite proactive with that and seeing what is available. Number nines are normally the most difficult ones to get.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/articles\/clyjp8d122do?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rangers are being &#8220;proactive&#8221; in seeking a new striker after Youssef Chermiti was ruled out long term, says manager Derek McInnes, who warned defensive injuries have left the club &#8220;playing with fire&#8221;. Chermiti, 22, sustained an anterior cruciate ligament injury in Saturday&#8217;s defeat by Hibernian, shortly after McInnes confirmed a bid had been rejected for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[2739,666,2170,1856,7381,2257],"class_list":["post-58547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scotland","tag-defence","tag-fire","tag-playing","tag-rangers","tag-seek","tag-striker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58549,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58547\/revisions\/58549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}