Glasgow Rangers defender David Bates suffered an ankle injury at Ibrox on Sunday, but it isn’t broken.
Graeme Murty has confirmed to Rangers TV that centre-back David Bates has not broken his ankle, but admitted that the scale of the injury has not been discovered.
The Rangers starlet was stretchered off in the first 15 minutes of the Gers’ 3-2 defeat by Old Firm rivals Celtic on Sunday.
The 21-year-old sustained the injury in what looked a fairly innocuous collision with Tom Rogic, but the manner in which he left the field suggested that it was far more serious than it seemed.
But although Murty reveals that nobody yet knows the full extent of the problem, the 43-year-old did assert that he did not break the bone.
“David is going to have a scan on his ankle, he has not broken it,” he told Rangers TV.
“It is a freak injury, he steps to the ball and goes to try and make a block and the ball flicks off his shin which takes it out of Wes’ grasp and as Rogic has a shot he comes down on David’s ankle.
“It looked a nasty one at the time and David is obviously upset but we won’t know the extent of it until we have it scanned.”
Losing Bates for an extended period of time is obviously a blow, but it would have been a far bigger one if he had broken the ankle, leading to months of rehabilitation.
In the mean time, Fabio Cardoso, who replaced Bates against the Hoops, will likely partner Russell Martin in the next game, if the Norwich City loanee is fit after missing the defeat by Celtic.
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