John Souttar has been ruled out until after the winter break following surgery as Rangers head to Tynecastle on Saturday with Tom Lawrence still sidelined.
Souttar has featured just once since moving to Ibrox in the summer after signing a pre-contract last January to move from Hearts and that came on the opening league weekend of the season when he was substituted off in the 67th minute of the win over Livingston.
The top flight will shut down in mid-November before resuming a month later and it’s a blow to the defender and Gers. Souttar hasn't had his injury troubles to seek during his career so far, twice rupturing his Achilles during six years at Tynecastle, as well as suffering previous hip and ankle injury which combined saw him sidelined for over two-and-a-half years.
Now boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst has revealed that the 26-year-old Scotland stopper won’t be available for selection until after the winter break with Filip Helander in the same boat.
Lawrence is also unavailable to face Souttar’s old club but Ben Davies is in the squad while Kemar Roofe has also returned to training. The Light Blues travel across the M8 to take on Robbie Neilson’s Jambos in a lunchtime kick off where a win for the visitors would be them top of the Scottish Premiership ahead of champions and rivals Celtic kicking off later.
Van Bronckhorst 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."
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