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The National (Scotland)
The National (Scotland)
Sport
Christopher Jack

Giovanni van Bronckhorst provides Rangers fitness and schedule update after Portugal trip

Giovanni van Bronckhorst

GIOVANNI VAN BRONCKHORST has confirmed Rangers won't alter their pre-season plans despite seeing their friendly with Sunderland abandoned on Saturday night.

The match at the Estadio Municipal de Albufeira was halted after just 45 minutes as a power cut plunged the ground into darkness and brought a premature end to proceedings.

Summer signing John Souttar and midfielder Ryan Jack were amongst those who took no part in the evening as a host of players were left with no match action under their belts.

It was far from an ideal end to the trip for Rangers but Van Bronckhorst is pleased with the progress as attentions turn to the trip to face Blackpool this weekend.

Van Bronckhorst said: "No we won’t try to arrange another game because I cannot use the players who played [on Saturday]. I only have 12 players.

"We had a session on [Sunday] with the players who didn’t play to give them physically a good session and we had everyone on board coming back.

"It is good. Of course we wished that we could have played for 90 minutes but in the end I think we made the right decision.

"John had to have some buttons pulled out of his ankle. It is nothing serious. He will start training this week.

"Ryan had an injury with his calf and he trained already this week. We are managing his load but he will be training with the squad as well.

"It is always difficult in the first week in pre-season. We started with a lot of youngsters, now gradually we are getting new players in and internationals are coming back.

"The first week you don’t have the full picture because you have many things. New players have to settle in, international players cannot come back straight away and everyone has different levels of fitness.

"In the next week to ten days we will have everyone fit and fresh."

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