Philippe Clement has confirmed that Rangers striker Kemar Roofe is ‘back’, sort of, as thanks to a striker and playmaker shortage, the Jamaica international has been drafted in to effectively make up the numbers, but can’t be counted on for much more than about 5 minutes.

Speaking at his pre-Hearts presser, Clement’s face told a story of resorting to calling the hitman up, knowing full well the chances of getting more than 10 minutes from him any time soon are very, very low, but having his hands tied into doing so.

He said:

“On the other side Kemar trained a few times this week with the group and that we don’t have so many offensive players he will be in the selection also, tomorrow he’s back in the squad, he will be back in the squad but for sure not to play one half or something it will be not too many minutes but it can be maybe important that at the end of the game you can put him with his goal scoring qualities and his experience to put them into the game.”

In short, he doesn’t really want to use Kemar, not this early, and not at this stage, but Rangers have only two strikers, and with no Sima and Cantwell nor Danilo, Roofe being 5% fit is better than nothing and if Rangers really need him for the final 5 minutes the manager will hail mary the life out of things and throw him on.

It’s not ideal, Cantwell’s injury really hasn’t helped, but Rangers’ attacking resources just fall short unfortunately.

Silva, Dessers, Lawrence, McCausland, Cortes and Wright are the ones available, we don’t know if Matondo is fit again yet.

That for the entire attacking line definitely lacks depth, and Roofe will be on the bench as a late replacement if it’s needed.

We very much hope that will not be the case.