Glasgow Rangers have been dealt a huge injury setback ahead of their upcoming Europa League fixture.

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In recent comments cited by Goal, Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst revealed that, despite the centre-back having returned to first-team training this week, Leon Balogun will be unavailable for selection against Olympique Lyonnais on Thursday evening.

The 33-year-old has still not fully recovered from an injury picked up the club's League Cup semi-final defeat to Hibernian back in November.

Speaking about the current state of his squad, the 46-year-old said: "Regarding the team news, I think Leon Balogun cannot travel [to face Lyon]. We still have a training session left and so far we have everyone on board. We just have to wait until after the training before I can announce my squad."

Van Bronckhorst will be gutted

While it is true that Thursday evening's fixture is not overly important in the grand scheme of things - as Rangers have already secured their place in the knockout stages of the Europa League - the fact that Balogun has not recovered in time for the fixture will nevertheless have left Van Bronckhorst gutted.

Indeed, with a much more important game against third-placed Hearts coming up for Gers this weekend, Thursday's trip to Lyon would have been an ideal game to reintroduce the centre-back to first-team football, allowing him the freedom to get back up to speed without having to worry too much about the result.

And, considering just how impressive the £720k-rated man has been over his 11 Premiership appearances so far this season - making an average of 1.4 interceptions, 1.8 tackles and winning 7.7 duels per game, seeing him earn an average SofaScore match rating of 7.05 - once again being without the services of the defender on Sunday would undoubtedly come as a huge blow to Gers' chances of picking up all three points at Tynecastle.

However, considering the centre-back will have now missed the club's last five fixtures in all competitions due to his injury, the risk of starting the 33-year-old against Hearts without having played a minute of football in nearly three weeks would appear to be a rather big one.

In other news: GVB must ruthlessly axe "incredible" 25 y/o Rangers ace who can "create danger" v Lyon