Philippe Clement has confirmed Rabbi Matondo suffered a small muscle injury v Ross County, and that’s why he was withdrawn at half time and replaced by Oscar Cortes.

Sadly, Matondo will not be available this weekend v St Johnstone in what is a modest blow with a player who was starting to show a touch of form and the boss hopes to have him back before the end of the month.

Speaking at his pre-Saints presser, the manager said:

“Rabbi, that’s why I changed him at half time, he had a small muscle injury, so we made a scan to make control and ok it’s clear that there’s a small thing. So he will not be available for this game. I think he will be back short term but for sure he will not be able to play this weekend.”

It’s bad timing for sure – Matondo has been improving steadily of late, getting in a lot of dangerous runs and beginning to build a bit of momentum in a game which has been an astonishingly slow burner at Ibrox, but in the past month he’s appeared quicker, sharper, and offered more in the final third.

And so it stands to reason the second he finally starts to hit some form he gets an injury to sideline him for potentially a week or two.

Rangers are modest for wingers – Ross McCausland, Cortes, and Scott Wright are the other options Philippe Clement has, and the Northern Irish international appears to be a clear favourite, but needs to maybe work on beating men, even if that doesn’t seem to be a forte of his game.

Wright is just poor, and Cortes is dynamite.

So it’s not ideal to lose one of these players going into what is now case-critical period for Rangers – one slip up now would hurt, we must keep the momentum that has taken 16+ weeks to build, and undoing all that now with a draw would be diabolical.

We need all our players to help achieve that so losing the Welshman isn’t ideal.