Rangers' major concern over key quartet won't affect team selection against Red Star - van Bronckhorst

Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst insists his team selection in Belgrade on Thursday evening won’t be influenced by the number of his players who are on the verge of a Europa League suspension.

Four of van Bronckhorst’s squad - Alfredo Morelos, Fashion Sakala, John Lundstram and Joe Aribo - are one booking away from a ban.

But despite the risk of them potentially missing the first leg of a quarter-final tie next month, van Bronckhorst will not factor that into his preparations for the second leg of the last 16 tie against Red Star Belgrade.

Rangers are strong favourites to progress after beating the Serbian champions 3-0 at Ibrox in the first leg last week but that advantage will not tempt van Bronckhorst to leave out any of his key players in a bid to ensure they can play in a last eight tie.

Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst will make no allowances for potential suspensions when he picks his team to face Red Star Belgrade on Thursday. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

“Obviously when you are playing so many games in Europe like we have, you will always have players one yellow card away from suspension,” he said. “That’s for every team.

“But it won’t affect our approach in selecting the team and also the players in the game don’t have to play a different way. We just have to go with the strongest eleven possible and do everything to win this tie - that’s the most important thing.

“Then we will see after the game who we have available for the next game.

“We only have two players missing through injury - Ianis Hagi and Steven Davis. The others are all training today before we travel. We have quite a big squad to take with us against a strong opponent.

“We saw last week it was quite an even game. Of course, we won with a three-goal margin which was a very good result for us to take with us for the game tomorrow.

“But we can expect an opponent who will do everything to overcome their 3-0 loss last week.

“For us, it starts all over again. We just go into the game preparing the team to get a good result. That’s all we are going to do, to work hard to be in the next round after the game.”

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