Rangers beat St Mirren but Daisuke Yokota joins Lawrence Shankland on operating table
Derek McInnes revealed Rangers' Japanese winger Daisuke Yokota will undergo surgery on a groin injury on Thursday which will keep him out for two to three months.
The Gers boss also confirmed that skipper Lawrence Shankland will be operated on by the same surgeon in London to repair a hamstring tear which will keep him out for up to four months, as he had predicted on Tuesday.
Neither summer signing was in the Light Blues side which beat St Mirren 1-0 in the William Hill Premiership at Ibrox thanks to a last-gasp strike by substitute Bojan Miovski.
McInnes said: "He (Shankland) is due to get the operation tomorrow in London.
"We just feel, because it's been a recurrence really, by getting the surgery it minimises the risk of that happening again.
"I know it can still happen again, but we need to be able to have that confidence for that, and it might take that extra three or four weeks.
"Unfortunately, he's not alone in London, Daisuke Yokota is getting a groin operation tomorrow as well, which has been quite unusual in the sense that, once we got him scanned on Monday, it showed that he had actually torn the muscle off the tendon in his groin.
"It's such an unpredictable injury, that the surgeon has decided that it needs surgery as well, so he'll be out at a significant time as well, probably reaching to two or three months as well with that.
"So they're actually getting done one after the other, the surgeon's rubbing his hands, he's getting two for the price of one. It is Shankland first and then Yokota."
McInnes claimed it was a "crime" that his side failed to open the scoring in the first half when Buddies keeper Jacob Chapman pulled off several saves, amid some poor finishing.
Miovski, pushed up the pecking order due to injuries to Shankland and Youssef Chermiti, replaced Djeidi Gassama and in the final seconds of normal time, he raced on to a Ryan Naderi flick and lobbed Chapman to make it four wins in a row.
McInnes said: "Let's be straight, we battered St Mirren in the first half.
"We were so guilty of passing up so many opportunities. I thought the performance in the first half was really strong, the aggression, the quickness of our passing, the ability to play in wider areas, the balls in the box, the amount of set plays we had.
"It's a crime that we've not scored in that first half and it's something we need to get better at."
Craig McLeish's side lost 5-1 at Ibrox in the Premier Sports Cup last month and the Buddies boss claimed his side were "monsters" in their return to Govan.
He said: “I thought tonight, especially in the second half, we showed that's how I want our team to look.
“Our energy levels, our quality on the ball at times. We said that to the boys, they don't get it as an excuse. It's four games in 12 days, and I thought we were monsters tonight.
“Our energy levels, fitness levels, that's what it needs to be."
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