Philippe Clement: Rangers need to get to the root of Kemar Roofe's injury problems

Rangers boss Philippe Clement says the club will have to make a full assessment of Kemar Roofe’s fitness to tackle the injury problems that have blighted his time at Ibrox.

Roofe missed the team’s 0-0 draw with Sparta Prague in the Europa League, continuing a disappointing start to the season.

The Jamaica international has seen his time at Rangers continually disrupted by injuries and has been limited to 88 appearances in three years at the club.

Now Clement has revealed that the forward will miss Sunday’s clash with hearts and that the club will be taking time to get to the bottom of the problem and ensure that when Roofe returns it’s at a level of fitness that allows him to contribute on a weekly basis.

“Kemar will not be available for the weekend, for sure,” the Rangers manager said. “Probably we need to rebuild in the next weeks and take a good look at that because he’s been struggling already for a long time with the same things.

“It’s important to find out what the reason for that is and not always to find the solution to get him fit for the next game and then have him struggling for the next one and going game by game. We need to really get to the cause of the problem.

“I can do a lot of things but I’m not a doctor. I can’t say anything about that.

“We first need to make a really good assessment of how to bring Kemar back in a way that can be long-term back and not short-term.

“That’s been the case the last couple of months to get him fit for games but in between he’s been struggling. So we need to get him really fit.”

Clement had encouraging news on another striker, with Danilo catching the eye after coming off the bench against Sparta, hitting the bar with a shot that could have seen the visitors take all three points.

The Brazilian is making a comeback after a broken cheekbone and his manager was cautious about when he would be ready to start games but said his build-up to being able to play full games would be carefully managed.

“He’s been out for quite a while and hasn’t played many 90 minutes in the last couple of months, or even the last year,” he said.

“He looked bright in the short period of time that he played. It’s about making him stronger to reach that level 90 minutes long.

“It’s the work of several weeks, I think, to bring him to that level. But we have a lot of cases like that so we’ll look at each individual case by case and how they recover after games.

“It’s interesting with Danilo to see after this if he looks good and we’ll work with the performance staff, the medical staff to make a really good plan for each individual player to get them to their best level.”