suffering anterior cruciate ligament damage<\/a> against Hibernian last month, McInnes is now left without his two leading strikers.<\/p>\n“Having [Shankland] and Youssef out, two guys that guarantee you goals at Premiership level, there’s no doubt it’s a blow for us,” McInnes said.<\/p>\n
“Their disappointment’s other people’s opportunity as you’ve seen even from Saturday – Ryan getting his goal, Kevin [Kelsy] getting introduced, we’ve got Bojan Miovski, who knows his way about the Scottish Premiership, so it’s not all doom and gloom on that front but it is disappointing news.”<\/p>\n
Rangers were good value for their win over Motherwell but with the number of chances they created it should have been more comfortable.<\/p>\n
“If Lawrence Shankland was on the pitch throughout, he’d be walking away with a couple of goals,” former Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday said on BBC Sportsound.<\/p>\n
Naderi capitalised on a blunder from Motherwell goalkeeper Alex Paulsen to roll the ball into an empty net. The big striker, who McInnes hinted would be called up by the Czech Republic, is a willing worker but can he deliver the sort of scoring numbers Shankland has consistently produced in the Premiership?<\/p>\n
He scored three goals in his 11 games last season after joining Rangers in January, two of which came in the 8-0 Scottish Cup rout of lower-league Queen’s Park. Naderi has three goals in eight appearances this term – one fewer than Shankland’s four goals in 10 games.<\/p>\n
Since joining Rangers, he has averaged a goal every 189 minutes. That figure is 146 minutes for Shankland, stretching back to the start of last season for Hearts.<\/p>\n
The only striker on Rangers’ books whose stats compare favourably with Shankland is North Macedonia international Miovski, who averages a goal every 148 minutes. However, the former Aberdeen favourite has found it difficult to get a consistent run in the side. Big-money signing Kelsy will come into the mix following his arrival from Portland Timbers.<\/p>\n
The Venezuela forward had a golden opportunity to announce himself on his debut against Motherwell but showed little composure as his shot clipped the crossbar on its way out.<\/p>\n
Of course, it is far too early to rush to judgement on Kelsy’s ability to fill the Shankland void, but 13 goals in his past 46 games – averaging one every 190 minutes – would suggest the Ibrox club have not signed an out-and-out scorer.<\/p>\n
“It’s not an ideal scenario,” former Rangers goalkeeper Cammy Bell said on the BBC’s Scottish Football Podcast<\/a>. <\/p>\n“They would have wanted to allow a little bit of time for Kelsy to find his feet in Scottish football and at Rangers. He’s not going to get that now.<\/p>\n
“You’d think Kelsy is going to be the one that will have to step up to the plate and score important goals because you can’t rely on Shankland for now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After three goals in his previous two games – decisive contributions in wins at Aberdeen and Falkirk –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-840751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}