Rangers reveal names of five Covid rule-breakers who left Steven Gerrard feeling 'personally let down'

Rangers have confirmed the identities of the players who broke Covid-19 rules and were issued with fixed-penalty tickets in the early hours of Sunday morning after police were called to a flat in the west end of Glasgow and discovered 10 people congregated there.

The club, after having imposed an embargo on the issue – saying “We have no intention of engaging on this” – broke silence at last to state that the culprits were Bongani Zungu, Nathan Patterson, Calvin Bassey, Dapo Mebude and Brian Kinnear and are self-isolating.

“I feel personally let down by recent events but I am trying to move forward and focus on the important things, which is to prepare the team for a huge game against Antwerp,” said Steven Gerrard, the Rangers manager.

Bassey, with 14 appearances, was last seen in Rangers’ only defeat of the season, the Scottish League Cup quarter-final loss to St Mirren in Paisley. Patterson’s fourth outing of the campaign was as a substitute for the last 20 minutes of the 5-0 Scottish Premiership victory over Ross County at Ibrox on Jan 23. Mebude, a 19-year-old forward, is on loan to Queen of the South.

In the Scottish Parliament on Monday, Scotland’s First Minister answered a question on the affair and said that football should “make sure your house is in order”. Gerrard said on Wednesday that the club was “in dialogue with the SFA and government moving forward to find the solution in terms of those boys”.

The affair illustrates the unprecedented hazards of the pandemic and the consequences of failure to observe protocols. At the beginning of this month, I suggested to Gerrard that potential breaches of Covid-19 rules were the greatest threat to Rangers’ first title success in 10 years and his first managerial honour.

“The players are well aware and we’ve had numerous meetings,” Gerrard said. “They’ve had enough education and support throughout the pandemic. The players and staff in this bubble know how we have to go about it and live our lives.

“It's a challenge for everyone and it’s the same throughout the leagues. We just need to be on our guard. The good news on the outside is that numbers are coming down, vaccines are going up. So hopefully things will continue to move in the right direction. We just need to be on our guard.”

That degree of vigilance, however, proved vulnerable to the unheeding actions of the five named players, who have been fined by the club as a first sanction.

The SFA’s fast-track disciplinary process will not apply to their Covid-19 breaches but they can expect a condign response if the examples of George Edmundson and Jordan Jones are indicative. The pair were compelled to self-isolate for 14 days before being banned for seven games by the SFA and were offloaded by the club - Edmundson on loan to Derby County and Jones on loan to Sunderland.

Celtic win final game in hand against goal-shy Aberdeen

By Roddy Forsyth

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With the clutter of games in hand at last brushed out of the way, the gap between Rangers and Celtic was clarified at 15 points at the end of a contest which was settled early when David Turnbull scored the only goal to see the defending champions to a fifth successive victory. Aberdeen’s players could be called The History Boys, but it is an unwelcome distinction for the first squad to go six games without a goal since the club was founded in 1903.

The long journey back to the Granite City was rendered even less bearable by the news that Bruce Anderson – the Aberdeen striker loaned to Hamilton at the end of January – had scored for the second time in as many games, in the 1-1 draw with St Mirren in Paisley which lifted the Accies one point clear of Ross County at the foot of the table.

Aberdeen had arrived in the east end of Glasgow fearful of the stigma of failure and the opening passage were dominated by a Celtic side who smelt vulnerability after the fashion of a lion scouting the watering hole for a stray wildebeest. On the quarter hour the fangs were plunged into Aberdeen’s neck in ravenous fashion when Callum McGregor played Turnbull into range around 30 yards out.

The midfielder, who has been one of the brighter features of a largely disappointing season for Celtic, demonstrated his menace by drilling a low shot through the foot of space between Joe Lewis and his right-hand post. The absence of even a token intervention suggested negligence on the part of Lewis Ferguson, who had been patrolling in front of his back three.

Prior to this, Aberdeen had contrived a moment of menace but it amounted to no more than a shot from Florian Kamberi which was an easy take for Scott Bain. The Swiss striker was next prominent 10 minutes before the break when he had a plausible claim for handball against his marker, Stephen Welsh, but was dismayed to see Alan Muir dismiss his plea. The impression that the Dons had become playthings for the wanton gods of football was heightened by two near things for Aberdeen. First, Dean Campbell broke into the penalty are to deliver a cutback which begged to be touched across the line but found no takers.

Then Kamberi worked an opening near the edge of the Celtic box and got sufficient power into his strike to confound Scott Bain but not the base of the post, from which the ball rebounded. By that stage, Aberdeen had just passed the unwanted milestone of 500 minutes without a goal and, in what remained of the half, it required a fine two-handed parry by Lewis to prevent Odsonne Edouard from making it 2-0.

Aberdeen took the field for the restart a good three minutes before Celtic and their evident desire to get on with the contest was manifest when play got under way but by the midway point of the second half their most threatening moment, fashioned by Fraser Hornby with a swivel and shot, was muffled comfortably by Bain.

As time wore on, Derek McInnes and his players grew manic in their quest to avoid an ignominious entry in the chronicles of Pittodrie. As the match moved into four minutes of added time, the congestion of red jerseys in and around the Celtic penalty area was supplemented by the appearance of Lewis, first for a corner kick which only narrowly eluded his attempt at a header and then at a free kick, taken by the goalkeeper deep inside Hoops territory.

It was, however, Lewis’s opposite number who brought the proceedings to a close by diving at the feet of Ferguson to thwart the Aberdeen midfielder and ensure that a dismal statistic would be established in the north-east of Scotland.

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