PHILIPPE Clement has admitted he may not know his Rangers team for the Scottish Gas Scottish Cup final until 24 hours before the Ibrox club play Celtic at Hampden.
The Belgian has concerns over the fitness of Leon Balogun, Borna Barisic, Rabbi Matondo, Abdallah Sima, John Souttar and Ridvan Yilmaz ahead of the meeting with the Scottish champions.
Elsewhere, John Lundstram has missed the last two cinch Premiership games because of the suspension he picked up when he was red carded in the 2-1 league defeat to the Parkhead club last weekend.
Clement, whose side were held to a 3-3 draw by Hearts in their final top flight outing at Tynecastle this afternoon, is unsure who will be available to start for the Viaplay Cup winners in Mount Florida and will not make any early calls on his line-up.
READ MORE: Rangers manager appeals for 'very correct' cup final VAR calls
“I don't know yet what the story will be,” he said. “A player could be fit on Friday and play some minutes and I need to wait until that moment. I don't like this situation, but it's been that way for a few weeks.
“We will see. It was positive Abda and Ridvan could take some minutes today. We will see if Leon can be fit again. We are going to see in the week so in that way it is difficult for me to plan the starting 11 and what players are going to make it.
Clement praised the impact which Rangers youngsters Robbie Fraser, Leon King and Ross McCausland, who scored a second-half equaliser, had against Hearts and expressed hope they can continue to feature going forward.
READ MORE: Hearts 3 Rangers 3: Instant reaction to the burning issues
“I saw a team fighting and giving their best, also the young boys,” he said. “We need to pay attention to the really positive things if you see how the young boys are growing into the team.
“Ross scored a really good goal and that was a player last year who had trained only five times with the first team all season. Now he has played a lot.
“It's a pity he was kicked off the pitch for eight to ten weeks when his momentum was growing. I see positive things also about Robbie, Cole McKinnon, Johnly [Yfeko]. We are working hard on that and it's a positive thing.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel