Former Rangers captain Lee Wallace recently featured for the Rangers reserve team to take on St Andrews University. The 31-year-old was the only senior member in the squad as all the other players were from the Gers academy. The team news was shared by Official Rangers Youth Academy, and that goes on to show how much the left-back has fallen in contention from the first team.
Wallace has struggled with injuries but it seems like the last season bust-up with Graeme Murty is still in the head of everyone. Wallace was fined four weeks of his wages, but he won his appeal and stayed on with the club in the summer. The fullback is in the final year of his contract, and it seems like his time is slowly going to come to an end.
The former skipper didn’t even manage to make the Europa League squad even though Steven Gerrard had earlier claimed that Wallace would have a role to play. Gerrard was quoted as saying,”Lee is a leader and he’s had a tough time with injury, but I wanted to name him on the bench today, not necessarily to use him but just to start getting him the feel back for the crowd and being around in the dressing room. The idea now is to push him and try and get him match-fit as soon as we can and he’ll be a big positive for us in the squad.”
The Scotsman has featured on the bench just once this season, and the scraping of his name from the Europa League squad suggests otherwise. It seems likely that 31-year- old would slowly be sidelined from the main squad.
Yes, he could have played with the youth team to get some much-needed game time but the writing seems on the wall as Wallace is going to find himself on the fringes of the squad.
The signing of fullbacks like Borna Barisic and Jon Flanagan indicates the same. Barisic has started the season brightly and has been one of the best summer signings for the Teddy Bears. The Croatian was even called up for national duty recently and until and unless there is a major injury issue, Barisic is set to remain the first choice left back at the club. Even in his absence, we expect Gerrard to pick Flanagan over Wallace and that makes the last season’s captain a third choice option for the left back role.
Maybe he can turn it around as the season progresses but Wallace should at least be making the match day squads regularly to have a chance to be back in the first team. It seems now a matter of time and it is likely that the fullback is just counting his days to run down the final year of his contract.
