Rangers suffer 'unpredictable' double injury whammy over summer signing duo with surgeon 'rubbing his hands'

Derek McInnes has confirmed another of his summer signing’s is joining Lawrence Shankland in London for surgery.

The Light Blues won 1-0 over St Mirren in dramatic fashion on Wednesday in the Premiership thanks to a late second half strike by Bojan Miovski. It puts Rangers in better form heading into a Premier Sports Cup quarter final with Celtic but boss McInnes has revealed Daisuke Yokota has suffered a groin problem requiring intervention. It comes after Shankland’s hamstring tear against Motherwell last weekend.

McInnes said: “Shankland will miss up to four months while Yokota could be out for three. He is due to get the operation tomorrow in London. They've just made the decision that, as I thought they would do. Something Lawrence was likely to do as well, although it's the same level of injury, 2C hamstring in that area, we just feel, because it's been a recurrence really, that minimises, by getting the surgery, it minimises the risk of that happening again. I know it can still happen again, but we need to be able to have that confidence for that, and it might take that extra three or four weeks.

What Rangers summer signing is undergoing surgery?

“Unfortunately, he's not alone in London, Daisuke Yokota is getting a groin operation tomorrow as well, which has been quite unusual in the sense that, once we got him scanned on Monday, it showed that he had actually torn the muscle off the tendon in his groin. It's such an unpredictable injury, that the surgeon has decided that it needs surgery as well, so he'll be out at a significant time as well, probably reaching to two or three months as well with that. So they're actually getting done one after the other, the surgeon's rubbing his hands, he's getting two for the price of one. It is Shankland first and then Yokota

On the win, McInnes added: “Delighted. Absolutely delighted. We were waiting for a bit of quality and a big moment in the game and thankfully Bojan comes up with that. It was a win we deserved. Let's be straight, we battered St Mirren in the first half. We were so guilty of passing up so many opportunities. I thought the performance in the first half was really strong, the aggression, the quickness of our passing, the ability to play in wider areas, the balls in the box, the amount of set plays we had.

“It's a crime that we've not scored in that first half and it's something we need to get better at. I've been in opposition coming here, and when you've been put through the wringer like that and you're still in the game, you have not conceded then you take a real step of belief at half time, you start to think ‘we've survived that, we can only get better.’ I thought St Mirren were better, but I thought we started the second half pretty strong again.

“You have to say initially the changes didn't really help us. I thought between 65 and 85 minutes, I thought St Mirren were a better team. St Mirren stepped on to us, I think St Mirren started to press us a bit higher and we were guilty of so many poor decisions. The amount of poor decisions we made in that 20-minute period was nowhere near good enough.

Rangers 1-0 St Mirren verdict

“What we needed to do was something like the goal. When the press comes on to them and they start to get a wee bit more aggressive, a wee bit more encouragement that they can upset us, and they go man for man at the back, why not just play forward? We were so… I don’t know if we think we're Rangers and we think we're better than that, and we'll still keep playing our little pretty patterns and we'll try and get out.

“It was annoying me that our reluctance and our failure to play forward was killing us, and bringing unnecessary pressure on ourselves. The goal is an example of bypassing the press, playing up to Ryan Naderi, a flick on, Bojan timing his run and running through, and a brilliant finish nonetheless. Chapman for them was pulling off unbelievable saves, and even with Bojan running through he still got a lot to do, but a top class finish, a moment to savour, and it was no more than the players deserved.

“This is what we'll get, I think we'll get a lot of late wins and I think it demonstrates strength of squad, strength of character, strength of fitness, but also a way we thought we'd keep going and believe that they're there. For a 20-minute period I thought the belief was in the team that we could go and get a win, and I'm just delighted we've found a moment to go and get all three points.”

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