EACH of the three players who were injured at Rangers are now back in full training and Ally McCoist says their returns couldn’t have come at a better time. Dean Shiels joined the group yesterday after spending more than four months out sidelined by and rehabilitating from a medial knee ligament injury. His comeback follows an appearance on the bench at the weekend by defender Chris Hegarty following a hernia operation at the end of last season. And Barrie McKay is also back playing friendlies again having recovered from a foot problem of his own. Manager McCoist finds himself restricted at present in terms of who he can select for which games between now and the end of the club’s registration ban at the end of next month. For this weekend’s League Cup tie at Forfar, for instance, he is unable to use any of the eight players who have agreed to join the club over the summer. Add in the fact both Ross Perry and Kyle Hutton are out with ankle ligament problems and the list of absentees runs into double figures for the trip to Station Park. Whether Hegarty, Shiels and McKay will all be in good enough condition to be in the squad which will play the Loons remains to be seen. But McCoist has welcomed the fact each of them are progressing at an awkward point of the campaign. He said: “Andy Mitchell has been out since he hurt his ankle during our trip up north but he’s back in full training again while Kyle and Ross are a bit longer term. “Dean is coming back and he has obviously joined training too while David Templeton, as we saw at the weekend, still has a bit to go but he’s getting there. “Chris made the bench on Sunday and you know what he is like. Pulling him back is the problem but after a big operation, he has had a couple of bounce games. “Dean and Barrie aren’t too far behind him at all and they’re doing well. Barrie had an hour in an under-20 match the other day and 45 in the game before so he’s coming along. “Dean hasn’t had any action as yet but he’s certainly stepping things up in training and he’s in with the squad again. “Without some of these guys and the trialists, our squad could look pretty thin so it’s important to get players back fit again at the moment. “They will obviously play a part. We can’t use any of the new players in the League Cup or in the next round of the Ramsdens Cup either. “Once you digest the fact we’re restricted with how many trialists we can play in the league, you see how crucial it is to have everyone else who was with us last year fit.”
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 10:15:41 +0000
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