Rangers manager Michael Beale has suggested that Rabbi Matondo and Alex Lowry are new injury cases with ‘slight knocks’ which forced the duo to miss Monday’s home clash with Celtic.

While the Wales man’s absence will barely be noticed in fairness, young Lowry’s absence from events yesterday was a notable point in the team sheet, with fans struggling to understand why the playmaker wasn’t part of the squad.

In truth, we suspect neither of them have ‘slight knocks’ and just missed out because Beale didn’t want them for this one, but that’s based on our own opinion of how reliable the manager’s word is on these matters, the same man who said Ryan Jack was 100% a starter for him, then proceeded to drop him v Celtic.

But if these are genuinely injuries, then they’re definitely not wanted, even in Matondo’s case, despite the Wales’ man’s absolutely horrible start to life at Ibrox. Lowry, on the other hand, is an impressive Rangers youngster who may have a lot to offer, but has not really been used at all by the new boss, who has overlooked him pretty much in the same fashion as ex-manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst did.

Just when we appear to have recovered a lot of our lost men, and attacking options are looking reasonably strong, another two have been added to the injury list.

So for now, the available attackers are Kent, Wright, Sakala, Tillman and supposedly Roofe. The missings remain Lawrence, Hagi, maybe Roofe, and now Matondo and Lowry.

We look very much forward to the day we have few injuries and the manager has the full squad to choose from.

As we say, either all that or Beale just didn’t fancy either of them for Monday, and in truth, in Matondo’s case, we wouldn’t really blame him for that. But Lowry is a strange one at Rangers – this was supposed to be his breakthrough season, but Gio and now Beale have both been mostly disinterested in him.

Is he not as good as we think? We’ve been impressed by what we saw, but then, perhaps that was based on low expectation.

Time, as always, will tell.