Nice boss aiming to leave Rangers with sore heads after his own health scare as key injury update delivered

Franck Haise is fearing another major headache if his OGC Nice side drop further points against Rangers in the Europa League tonight - just a few days after being taken to hospital with a severe migraine.

The Frenchman suffered the health issue in the wake of Sunday’s 2-1 Ligue 1 victory over Strasbourg and while his side are performing well domestically, they’ve toiled in European competition after recording just two points so far.

The opposite applies to Philippe Clement’s Gers who have impressed in Europe’s second tier competition while stuttering on league duty, especially at home. And Haise is determined that his players prevent him from experiencing another sore head at the Allianz Riviera this evening.

He admitted: “I had some issues on Sunday but I got treatment and I’m OK. Maybe if we’d scored a third goal against Strasbourg then I wouldn’t have had this intense headache! Every coach hates defeat, every coach has a way of showing it - sometimes it hurts your head.

“We know how important it is to win the game (against Rangers) because we haven’t won yet in the Europa League. Rangers have had some average results in their league but I’ve watched them in the Europa League and they don’t have too many flaws in their European games.”

Rangers, meanwhile, have once again travelled without the ineligible pair of Danilo and Ianis Hagi, but Clement is hopeful of having more options to call on in the coming weeks as he issued a fitness update on a number of crocked stars.

“We’ve had big periods with 12 players out,” the Belgian boss stated. “But Oscar (Cortes) did his first part of training (on Wednesday) so he will need still a few more weeks to be really ready to play games, but it’s a positive thing. Tom (Lawrence) is also closing in and in the next couple of weeks he will be back. Rabbi (Matondo) will do the same - and we want to keep it that way.”