Injuries – and there have been many – have not been allowed to define Philippe Clement’s Rangers reign to date.
The Belgian gaffer has managed an astonishing series of short and long-term injury problems in his brief tenure at the club, problems which stem back to the end of Steven Gerrard’s time.
But Clement has not allowed the situation to be used as an excuse, even when the hurdles got bigger, instead embracing the opportunity to establish one of Big Phil’s non-negotiables.
Could Rangers injuries be about to relent?
If you’re going to play for his Rangers team, you need to be willing to play anywhere on the pitch, and to leave everything on it when you do.
It’s resulted in a resurgent team togetherness which was devoid under the reign of Michael Beale and as the season bottlenecks, now the injury issues are slowly beginning to relent.
The Rangers boss deserves huge credit for getting this patchwork team into a potentially treble-winning position come May and that hard might just be about to pay off.
Heading into the Scottish Premiership clash with Hibs – three weeks on from Rangers’ last league match against Motherwell – four names are back amongst the Ibrox ranks.
Philippe Clement Ibrox injury update
Philippe Clement told a press conference that Rangers are set to be boosted by the imminent returns of Dujon Sterling, Kieran Dowell, Abdallah Sima, and Ross McCausland.
It leaves Ridvan Yilmaz, Ryan Jack, Oscar Cortes, and Danilo on the sidelines as Rangers creep slowly back to their full complement.
“I will say the players who are back in training,” Clement said. “Dujon (Sterling) is back in training, Kieran Dowell is back in training, Abdallah Sima is back in training and Ross McCausland is back in training.
“They are in contention (to play against Hibs) but not to play 90 minutes. Then it’s to make choices if they can only play 15, 20 minutes you can’t have four or five players like that on the bench so we need to take that into account and to make good choices around that.”
On the players who are out of action, Clement said: “So the guys who are out is Ridvan (Yilmaz), Ryan Jack, Oscar Cortes and Danilo.”
Pressed on Ridvan Yilmaz, the Rangers boss added: “It’s not going to be long, long term. We’re going to see next week. There’s a possibility he can be fit for next week but it’s still a doubt so we will see next week to make more evaluation about that.”
It means that should Ridvan Yilmaz return for the Old Firm clash with Celtic at Ibrox, it’ll leave Ryan Jack, Oscar Cortes, and Danilo propping up the medical room.
When you consider that at one point Rangers had twelve first-team players out of action, Philippe Clement’s not done too bad a job in this department at all.
