MICHAEL BEALE has revealed midfielder Tom Lawrence has been ruled out of action until the start of next season after being forced to go back under the knife this term.

And striker Kemar Roofe will seek further specialist advice as he faces another spell on the sidelines in what has been a campaign to forget at Ibrox.

Rangers have been plagued by injury issues in recent months as both Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Beale have been left without several key players for lengthy spells of the season.

John Souttar and Ridvan Yilmaz have returned to action ahead of the Premiership visit of Kilmarnock this weekend as Beale's side look to bounce back from their defeat to Celtic in the Viaplay Cup final.

But the Ibrox boss will be without Roofe for the foreseeable future as Lawrence - who has now featured since August - embarks on another rehabilitation programme following knee surgery in recent days.

Beale said: “John Souttar is back in the squad, Ridvan trained last week and in the three days into the final we had 24 fit players training. Rabbi Matondo was back, Scott Arfield was back.

"Ianis Hagi has just got a loading problem with his knee. Sometimes it reacts to certain things so he’s in and out of training but he’s fit for the weekend.

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"John and Ridvan are too but with Ridvan it’s probably more with an eye on the cup tie next weekend. He’s back in training but only for seven days so I’d like him maybe to get some minutes in a B Team game or behind closed doors just to make sure. But he looks in a good place.

"Tom Lawrence has had another operation and won’t be available until the back end of pre-season.

"Kemar tried to train on Saturday but it was no good. Unfortunately with Kemar he’s going through a tough time at the moment and he will be away to see someone as we need to get to the end of this.

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"He has a problem with his calf but there are one or two other things that could be leading to that that have been nagging. Me and him have had a real heart to heart.

"He’s a boy that I’m really close to. I want to see him get some light at the end of the tunnel so we’re going to get some advice on that.

"With Tom Lawrence he was back our training in isolation, had some real discomfort when he was running. They had a look and they had to do a procedure so he won’t be back until the back end of pre-season."