Ryan Hardie has a bright future at Ibrox, says Pedro Caixinha

But the Scotland Under-21 poacher has been told he is going nowhere this season following the departures of Martyn Waghorn and Joe Garner.

An injury to Eduardo Herrera last week saw Caixinha turn to the fresh-faced front man as he was called up to the Gers boss' first-team squad for Saturday's visit of Hearts.

He was then thrown on with 20 minutes left as the Ibrox outfit chased down a late winner against the Jambos.

While Hardie was unable to provide a finishing touch during the frustrating 0-0 draw, he showed enough to convince Ciaxinha he deserves another chance on the senior stage.

The Portuguese coach told RangersTV: I met Ryan when we arrived last season later on when he came from the loan process.

I was told by our doctor, who likes him a lot, that he was a goalscorer, he is definitely a goalscorer, and when he has a chance he scores.

Unfortunately he had one-and-a-half chances on Saturday and he almost scored, but he didn't score in the game.

He is an option for us after Martyn left the club, so we have Kenny Miller, we have Alfredo Morelos, we have Eduardo. And Ryan and Zak Rudden can be options for us if a situation like this happens.

We have no problem at all to place him on the pitch. With 20 minutes of the game left we felt that the team was putting Hearts against the ropes and we were needing more presence in the box. So we changed it.

We placed Ryan alongside Alfredo, with Kenny also down the left but coming inside to be like the third striker, to have that presence. He had two chances and almost scored one goal.

Last season we used a lot of players from the youth system and this season we are already using it, so that means of course that we use it if we have the need and we will use it if they have the quality to perform with us.

It's always important to look at what we have inside the club.'

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