Gio van Bronckhorst insists only his "best" players will make his team to face Hearts on Saturday - but will have to make do without John Souttar and Tom Lawrence for now.
Rangers face the trickiest Premiership fixture on paper outside of the Old Firm as they travel to Gorgie knowing a win would put them back on top of the league - at least momentarily. They cut the gap on Celtic to two points before the break and will be looking to hit the ground running on their return as they look to wrestle their title back at the first time of asking.
Hearts go in confident having consolidated third spot and picked up a huge Euro win on the road before the break and they'll relish the chance to go level on points with their Glasgow opponents. One thing they won't have to worry about is a reunion with Souttar after Van Bronckhorst revealed he will be out until after the World Cup, while Lawrence is still missing after an impressive start to life at Ibrox.
He said: "We will expect John Souttar after the World Cup. That’s very long term and it’s the same for Filip Helander. I don’t know the timescale for his injury.
“I have a lot of sympathy for John. He has the problems he had before. He brought the problems with him when he changed teams. We need for him to be operated on again and he feels much better now. It’s always better to play without pain and it’s the first time in many months he is pain-free so hopefully that’s the end of the difficult times he has had and he can get back to full fitness.
“There are no new injuries. All the players who were on international duty are fit to feature. Apart from the players we had back before the break we don’t have any other players back. Tom Lawrence is still not available.
“Ben Davies is back in the squad. Kemar Roofe is training bit parts of the training sessions now so we need to keep assessing him and see what he is back. Hopefully that’s sooner rather than later – both for Kemar and me as a coach."
Provisional Rangers squad
Robby McCrorie
Allan McGregor
James Tavernier
Adam Devine
Connor Goldson
Ben Davies
James Sands
Leon King
Borna Barisic
Ridvan Yilmaz
Ryan Jack
Glen Kamara
Steven Davis
John Lundstram
Malik Tillman
Scott Arfield
Rabbi Matondo
Ryan Kent
Scott Wright
Fashion Sakala
Alfredo Morelos
Antonio Colak
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