Ambassador Ferguson goes off message with long term injury fear

Barry Ferguson fears that Danilo is facing a long term injury.

Last week it emerged that the Brazilian striker was back in a knee brace after undergoing further surgery after last season came to an end in December.

The media messengers were quick to dampen down fears of a long term absence by claiming that Danilo would only be out for a month but that was contradicted when the former Feyenoord man was left out of Phil Clement’s Europa League squad.

Only Malmo away on September 26 falls within the one month timeline with even Ferguson capable of putting two and two together.

These days the former Clyde and Alloa boss is on a retainer as a club Ambassador allowing him a seat in the Directors Box to see Celtic rack up another Glasgow Derby victory.

Part of the Ambassador remit is to spread soothing good news to the media but on Go Radio yesterday Fergie revealed his fears for Danilo:

He is not in the Europa League squad for the games, that tells me that he is going to be out for longer than a month.

I don’t know exactly what the injury is, it might be a reoccurrence of the knee injury that he suffered because it was a serious knee injury.

That is disappointing because a lot of the fans are quite excited because it has been a bit of stop start to his Rangers career when he has come in.

He has looked really good before he actually got that injury. Yes it is a blow because they are very light up top, very light.

Ferguson will probably provide a correction later this week in his Daily Record column, without Danilo and Rabbi Matondo manager Clement is left with Cyriel Dessers and Hamza Igmane as his only strikers for the Europa League which features two matches against English and two against French opponents.

Danilo cost £6m in July 2023 and has the comfort of a contract running until May 2028 as one of the top earners at the troubled club.