But it was at Rangers <\/a>that the goalkeeper rebuilt his knee \u2013 and thus made the biggest save of his life.<\/p>\n His playing days.<\/p>\n Rangers physio Steven Walker helped him get back between the sticks in 2014 after two years out injured.<\/p>\n But the Hearts<\/a> legend admits he had to be SELFISH and look after number one when deciding on his next move.<\/p>\n He would go on to lift 12 trophies including five league titles with Celtic.<\/p>\n Incredibly, 11 years later, Gordon\u2019s<\/a> on course to break the 700 club appearances milestone and he is now on 81 Scotland<\/a> caps with the 2026 World Cup still in his sights.<\/p>\n And he owes the majority of all that, in no small part, to Ibrox physio Walker.<\/p>\n A total of 41 caps and nearly 400 club appearances have come in the 11 years since his miraculous recovery from a series of knee injuries at Sunderland that looked to have ended his career.<\/p>\n Gordon had three operations and underwent treatment in Barcelona and London before spending the best part of a year working with Walker.<\/p>\n Now, as he looks forward to his testimonial season at his beloved Jambos, Gordon said: \u201cI probably thought that I wouldn\u2019t play again.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I went into Rangers I worked with Steven and he was really good.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was the guy that worked out how to get me back.<\/p>\n \u201cIt came through Jim Stewart, who had been a goalkeeping coach at Hearts and Scotland, and who was with Rangers at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cRangers had already rehabilitated a Norwegian guy, Thomas Kind Bendiksen, with a very similar injury.<\/p>\n \u201cI had PRP (Platelet-Rich Plasma) injections over in Barcelona with the guy that Pep Guardiola sends his players to.<\/p>\n \u201cI had high-volume injections in London. I had all the different treatments I could possibly do to chuck everything at it.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if it\u2019s one person who turned it round, I would say it would be Steven. He was able to devise a programme that enabled me to build up the muscle around my knee to take the load off the tendon.<\/p>\n \u201cI just never know what would have happened without that. Once I realised there was a chance to get back, I poured everything into it to give myself that one last opportunity to get to the bottom of it.\u201d<\/p>\n That was the start of a series of opportunities that have led Gordon miraculously back to the top.<\/p>\n By summer 2014, more than two years after his last appearance for Sunderland, he was in a condition ready to resume his career.<\/p>\n Not at Rangers though. At Celtic Park where Ronny Deila handed him his big chance.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cAt certain times as a footballer you\u2019ve got to be a bit selfish and do the thing that\u2019s best for you.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that was the best thing for me, for my career, to play at the highest level.<\/p>\n \u201cRangers were in the lower leagues at the time and took a further three years to come to the Premiership. I managed to get those three years playing in the Premiership and playing for Scotland that perhaps maybe I wouldn\u2019t have had.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a difficult thing to do but sometimes you\u2019ve got to do what\u2019s best.<\/p>\n \u201cRangers already had two senior goalkeepers.<\/p>\n \u201cTo add another one at that stage probably wasn\u2019t financially the right thing for them to do.<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted me to play in a couple of reserve games to prove that I was fit enough to stay there.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I had done that then my injury insurance would have been invalid. So I just couldn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was the reason why that never happened.<\/p>\n \u201cI spoke to Raith Rovers. Hearts had Jamie MacDonald and didn\u2019t know if he was going to be leaving. I think Neil Alexander came in.<\/p>\n \u201cThen Celtic came in. I knew I would have really good medical care there. I could give it the best possible chance to continue my rehab and try to get some games.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was obviously speculation about Fraser Forster so there was a little chink of light \u2013 him potentially moving on.<\/p>\n \u201cIt all fell into place at exactly the right time.<\/p>\n \u201cI managed to play 50 games my first season back after not playing for two years.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know it was possible until I managed to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25cf Tickets for Craig\u2019s testimonial match against Sunderland at Tynecastle Park on Saturday, July 26 are on sale now through heartsfc.co.uk<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hearts No1 admits he had to be SELFISH and look after himself despite the Light Blues hard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[2628,72806,94,76349,47959,1946,1638,79,10107,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-186224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-celtic-fc","9":"tag-craig-gordon","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-fraser-forster","12":"tag-hearts-fc","13":"tag-rangers-fc","14":"tag-scottish-premiership","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-transfer-talk","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114687156212771954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Craig](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_JS35187346.jpg\")
Craig Gordon trains with Rangers over ten years ago<\/p>\n![\"Craig](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_JS149043598.jpg\")
Craig Gordon signed for Celtic and went on to win 5 titles and multiple trophies<\/p>\n