Gerrard confirms Arfield will miss Rangers-Celtic clash

By David Walton

December 30, 2020

Steven Gerrard has provided Rangers with a big blow ahead of Saturday’s Celtic clash as Scott Arfield will definitely miss out.

Celtic fans were left worried after Christopher Jullien was stretchered off against Dundee United tonight. However, in the run-up to this evening’s games, much of the spotlight was on Arfield’s availability for Sunday.

The Canadian international has limped off during Rangers’ 1-0 win over Hibernian. However, his after heading off for a scan, it appears it’s come back with negative results for the Ibrox side.

That means Celtic could come up against a largely-weakened Rangers midfield. Arfield joins fellow midfielder Ryan Jack on the injury list.

As quoted by the Scotsman, Gerrard said the following: “The scan came back and we are just waiting on a few more opinions on it.

“We’ve had one opinion on it and he will obviously be missing in the short term. He will definitely be missing for a few weeks, that’s for sure.

“But in terms of the exact date or time, it’s very difficult to say right now. He will certainly miss the next two or three fixtures.”

Arfield has performed against Celtic in the past

This is big news ahead of the weekend. Whether we like it or not, Arfield has been central to many of Rangers’ recent successes against us.

He played in the last contest – a 2-0 win for the Ibrox side at Parkhead. He also played a key role in our 2-1 loss at Celtic Park back in December 2019. He’s been a frustrating figure.

It, therefore, looks likely that Rangers will go with the likes of Glen Kamara and Ianis Hagi respectively. With both Arfield and Jack out, the Ibrox side look weakened in that area. That’s not something they’ll have wanted to see given the form of Celtic dup Ismaila Soro and David Turnbull.

Rangers midfielder Scott Arfield is injured for the Celtic clash / (Photo by Rob Casey/SNS Group via Getty Images)

We won’t be fooled of course. We know it’s going to be a tough game regardless. Facing this Rangers side hasn’t proven to be an easy task in recent times. We’re still going to have to provide a top performance to take the points in Govan.

But even so, this is a timely boost for Celtic. We would like to think we would win the game regardless of who Gerrard plays in the engine room. However, there’s no denying that taking Arfield out of the equation changes the game a tad.

Hopefully, we make it count just as Rangers did when we were missing several top stars in October. We certainly have the players to make it happen.

In other news, 67HailHail writer Euan Davidson discusses how Celtic look a different animal than they did back in October.