Glasgow Rangers of Scotland defender, Leon Aderemi Balogun has gained a fresh shower of encomiums from the club’s coach, Steven Gerrard, even after he copped another freak injury in action for his team in their third match of the new Scottish Premiership season, megasportsarena.com reports.
Balogun had to bow out after just 45 minutes of Wednesday’s 3-0 victory over St. Johnstone, which helped The Gers go top of the log but, while many of the Ibrox faithful have started mocking the Super Eagles’ star for his spate of injuries, it is a different case from Gerrard, who says he has been impressed with the Super Eagles’ stopper’s early impact in the team.
Gerrard has opted to close his eyes to Balogun’s frequent romance with injury at both club and national team levels, as the former Liverpool captain insists the stopper is a huge asset for the club, which he joined after a short-term contract with Wigan Athletic of England.
Indeed, the former Fortuna Düsseldorf, Darmstadt, Werder Bremen and SV Mainz of Germany star has already set tongues wagging positively with his sterling efforts in the club’s first three matches of the season, such that Gerrard is looking only on the bright side of the player and admitted he is happy to see how impressive the 32-year-old centre back has been since teaming up with The Gers; while also hailing the star as a vastly experienced top player.
It has been a wave of accolades and high ratings trailing Balogun since he moved to Ibrox in July, after parting ways with Wigan, following their relegation to League One, and the Super Eagles’ star, who earlier played for Brighton & Hove Albion of England, continues waxing strong after going straight into Rangers’ starting 11 for their opening game of the season against Aberdeen.
Another rain of superlatives is now coming for the Germany-born lad, whose first professional contract was at Turkiyemspor Berlin and he went on to feature in 52 league games with Mainz, before he joined Brighton in the summer of 2018, then first joined Wigan on loan in January before it was extended into a short-term contract to enable him to complete the season with The Latics.
With Balogun in the starting line-up, Rangers have won their first three games in the division and without conceding but he managed 45 minutes of The Light Blues’ spanking of St. Johnstone, before making way for Filip Helander.
It marked another setback for Balogun, who has a Nigerian father and German mother, but committed his international career to the Super Eagles in 2014 and now has 32 caps for the national team, which he helped win bronze at the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt.
Part of his reasons in making the move to Scotland was to guarantee himself regular playing time that would help him keep his place in the Eagles, such that he would be delighted with the early impact he has enacted with The Gers, which he helped keep clean sheets in their first two matches of the campaign, while also twice getting named to the Scottish Premiership Team of the Week.
Following his thrills against Aberdeen and St. Mirren, Balogun bowed out against St. Johnstone, Gerrard admitted the star will face a fitness test ahead of Rangers’ next clash against Livingston at Tony Macaroni Arena on Sunday but posited that he is not in any way surprised with what the injury-prone star has been able to pull off, even as the Liverpool of England legend praised his new stopper’s performances so far.
Gerrard told Glasgow Times: “I think Balogun has a tight quad and we’ll get that looked at. He is definitely a concern for the weekend. We knew we were getting a top player in Balogun.
“He is our type and fits our profile and it is important at Ibrox when a team is deep for a defender to be able to sit on the halfway line. I spoke to [Wigan manager] Paul Cook about him and he had only good things to say about Leon.”
