I still remember standing in my kitchen on a grey December afternoon, phone in hand, scrolling through the latest Rangers team news as if I were reading a weather forecast for a picnic that had already been rained out twice. The build-up to the Viaplay Cup final against Celtic had all the calm of a library during a fire drill. Michael Beale’s press conference did not offer the reassurance I wanted. Instead, it felt like watching someone try to patch a leaking roof with tissue paper.

The headline was painfully familiar: Kemar Roofe had picked up another issue. Beale called it a “slight issue,” but around Ibrox those two words had long since become a euphemism with sharp edges. He was not ruling Roofe out, yet he was not exactly rolling out a red carpet for him either. “Kemar had a slight issue after the weekend, unfortunately. We won’t be too far away from the team that played against Livi,” Beale said. That sentence landed like a stone in my stomach. A League Cup final against Celtic is not a fixture where you want “not too far away from the team that played against Livi.”

Beale then added something that has stayed with me, even now in 2026. “It wasn’t a dress rehearsal, but there could be one or two more that declare themselves fit. I just need to make sure they are, because it’s important there’s not a bravado around it, that they genuinely are fit.” I understood the logic, but the subtext was as loud as a kettle at full boil: a handful of Rangers players were walking wounded, and honesty was now the manager’s only reliable substitute.

That is where the story became less about one final and more about a recurring wound. Roofe is, by any honest measure, a wonderfully gifted footballer. Since arriving from Anderlecht in a £4 million deal back in 2020, he had produced 36 goals and five assists in 78 appearances. Those numbers read like the sort of return you build a title charge around. But his body had become a broken promise. At that point he had missed 59 games through injury since joining Rangers, a statistic that sat on his career like a watermark on expensive wallpaper—impossible to ignore once you had seen it.

Journalist Dean Jones put it plainly when he told GiveMeSport that if Roofe was set for another spell on the treatment table, it was “hugely frustrating” for everyone at Rangers. He added: “He's a great talent, but his injury record really doesn't make for a good read or tell a good story. And it's such a shame because he's such a good player, but it's very hard now to rely on him.” As a fan, that was the exact emotional note I kept returning to. Relying on Roofe had started to feel like building a sandcastle below the tide line. You could shape something beautiful in the morning, but by kick-off you were never sure if the sea had already taken it.

The current campaign at that time had been the most frustrating of them all. The £26,000-per-week earner had been limited to just six outings, his season folded up small like a concert programme that never got opened. For the Viaplay Cup final, Beale also had Malik Tillman, John Lundstram, Ryan Jack and Scott Arfield as doubts. The treatment room looked less like a medical facility and more like a waiting room for a flight that kept being delayed.

I remember trying to imagine the dressing room on that final morning. Beale needed players to declare themselves genuinely fit, but footballers are not always the most reliable narrators of their own bodies. A final against Celtic is exactly the type of occasion that invites bravado. The manager’s words felt like a quiet plea: do not tell me you are ready if you are only ready to limp through the warm-up.

Looking back from 2026, that pre-final uncertainty now exists in my memory as a smoke signal from a damp fire—lots of grey, very little flame. Roofe did face a race against time to make the matchday squad, and the deeper concern was never just about one Sunday at Hampden Park. It was about whether a player of such obvious talent could ever escape the orbit of his own injury history.

Football loves a redemption arc, but it also loves a cautionary tale. The strange thing about that week is that both narratives were sitting in the same Rangers medical room, waiting to see which one would walk out first. I never stopped hoping it would be Roofe, fully fit and smiling, ready to remind everyone why Beale had trusted him. But I had also learned, the way all football fans eventually learn, that some hopes need to be kept in a drawer marked “fragile.”

That is the story I keep telling when people ask why a League Cup final against Celtic felt more tense than usual. It was not only about silverware. It was about watching a talented player become a question mark, and watching a manager ask for honesty in a sport that often rewards exactly the opposite.