Rangers are interested in signing Sunderland striker Ross Stewart – and Black Cats boss Alex Neil admits he’s being forced to overwork him right now.
The Gers are always being linked with new faces, and this will be the first summer window for Giovanni van Bronckhorst at Ibrox.
Ross Wilson needs to come up with some impact signings having left a little to be desired in recent windows.
One of his targets appears to be Stewart, who has been banging the goals in for Sunderland this season.
Formerly of St Mirren, Celtic and Partick Thistle, Stewart had to drop into non-league football with Ardeer Thistle and Kilwinning Rangers.
Now a hero at Sunderland, Stewart has racked up 22 goals in all competitions this season.
The 6ft 4in striker has been a bargain at just £300,000 and Sunderland can now expect a huge profit if they sell this summer.
For now though, Sunderland will just be hoping that Stewart can fire them to promotion this season.
Sunderland sit outside of the League One playoffs on goal difference and are only two points shy of fourth place.
Alex Neil will be hoping for a dream end to the season, but admits Rangers target Stewart is being overworked at the moment.
Neil has told The Northern Echo that he feels light up front right now and that means Stewart and Nathan Broadhead are being ‘flogged’.
Neil added that Stewart has never really had to play this many games in a season before and simply needs to ‘suck it up’ and keep going for the Sunderland cause.
“We’re really light in certain areas but with Ross and Broady, if I could have, I’d liked to have changed them and freshened that front line up and to be honest help them,” said Neil. “In the last 20 minutes you get a sense of anticipation because there’s energy but to be fair to the lads they have run themselves into the ground.”
“We’ve flogged Ross in particular to death this year but unfortunately for him we don’t have anyone else and that’s difficult. It is what it is but we need to rest him up and get him ready for the next games.”
“If you take Ross’ career in its entirety, the most he’s played is about 36-38 games,” he said. “But at the moment he’s to around mid-40s so to expect the lad to churn it out at this level you’re asking a lot of anybody to do that. So I have sympathy for Ross however it only goes so far. You’ve got to suck it up, rest up and get ready to because we’ve got big games coming up,” he added.
This is something that Rangers will be keeping close tabs on because of their own heavy workload.
Rangers have Scottish Premiership, Scottish Cup, Scottish League Cup and then European games to contend with.
Stewart may not have to play every game, but Rangers will want to know that he can handle plenty of games if he’s to arrive at Ibrox.
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