Lawrence Shankland suffers 'similar' hamstring injury that kept him out for three months

Derek McInnes has confirmed Lawrence Shankland has suffered a hamstring injury similar to the one that kept him out for three months at Hearts.

The Rangers captain had scored their previous three goals to secure their first two league wins of the season, and pulled up with an injury after eight minutes.

He was replaced by matchwinner Ryan Naderi who struck after being on the park for four minutes with the only goal of the game against Motherwell at Ibrox.

McInnes told Rangers TV: “It’s a hamstring injury, it’s an injury we think he had previously at Hearts last injury when he was out for three months.

“Hopefully it’s not as bad as that. It’s in a similar area. We’ll get him scanned on Monday and see how it is.

“The boy’s a bit down as you can expect, we will need to see where it is at.”

The Rangers boss then later said: “His output was really high on Wednesday at Falkirk on the 4G. Sometimes going from pitch to pitch, different surface, can maybe make you a wee bit more vulnerable.

“But he says he felt fine going into the game and there was nothing really that he did in the game that he was aware of, he just felt it pull up.

“It’s a shame for the boy because he was obviously in good form, getting himself moving and enjoying some of that attacking threat we’ve had over the last few games, and we’ve waited long and hard for that.”

New big-money signing Kevin Kelsy later joined Naderi up front for his debut and missed a good chance.

“Obviously if somebody had said to me walking in the door that (Youssef) Chermiti and Shankland were going to suffer significant injuries, you’d have felt the weight of that,” McInnes said.

“Getting Kevin was such a good bit of business, the club deserve a lot of credit for that.

“He’s such a good mover, strong boy. There was obviously a temptation to bring him on after five minutes, but he said he felt a bit stiff and tight from the previous couple of days training and the fact that he travelled.

“And I was delighted for Ryan. The good thing with Ryan, even when he’s not his best, he puts himself about, he lets centre-halves know he’s there. He presses brilliantly, which is great when you’re playing against a team like Motherwell.

“We’re going to need that squad. Bojan (Miovski) wasn’t in the squad but we’ve still got a guy who knows his way about the Scottish Premiership and can score goals as well.

“So having Ryan, Kevin, Bojan, Kim Min-su, who can play central, we’ve still got some decent options there.”

Rangers ultimately saw out the game without any late scares as they recorded a third consecutive William Hill Premiership victory.