Michael Beale has named his Rangers team to face Kilmarnock with January duo Todd Cantwell and Nicolas Raskin in from the start.
A lot was made of the decision to leave the duo on the bench last weekend, particularly the former Standard Liege midfielder, as the Light Blues boss suffered his first defeat in charge in the League Cup Final defeat to Celtic. Kyogo Furuhashi netted a Hampden double for Ange Postecoglou's men with Alfredo Morelos grabbing Rangers' strike at the national stadium.
But the Ibrox boss will be determined to put that defeat behind him and keep the pressure on the Hoops in the Premiership title race. They play away at St Mirren tomorrow allowing the men from Govan to reduce the gap to six points for at least 24 hours. Speaking ahead of hosting Derek McInnes' relegation battlers, Beale said: “It is really important to show a response and to win, we have three games in a week, it is a very interesting one.
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“Kilmarnock at home who are fighting for their lives down there, we know Derek [McInnes] will make it really tough, he has an insight into our club, so he knows how our crowd are going to react to the start of this game, and I think they will make it difficult, we need to get three points however we get it.”
He continued: “We go away to Easter Road - Lee [Johnson] has got them [Hibernian] in good form and then we have an important cup game at home, it is important that we show a strong response now in these four games including Motherwell away heading into the international break.
“We need to prove that the weekend was a cup final against a strong rival and we fell short, but the show goes on and we are moving forward.”
RANGERS XI: McGregor, Tavernier, Goldson, Davies, Barisic, Jack, Raskin, Cantwell, Fashion JR, Kent, Colak
Subs: McLaughlin, Lundstram, Hagi, Souttar, Kamara, Morelos, Wright, Arfield, Devine
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