Forgotten Rangers right back Mateusz Zukowski is on his way back to Ibrox with Lech Poznan declining to exercise their buy-out option after a disastrous loan spell.

The 21-year-old Pole moved to Ibrox in January last year in a £400,000 four-year deal from Lechia Gdansk and made his debut in a Scottish Cup victory over Annan Athletic.

However, he failed to make an impact and fell behind Scotland Under 21s star Adam Devine as back-up to Rangers captain James Tavernier.

When he signed on loan at Lech Poznan, the club's sports director Tomasz Rzasa stated: said: "Mateusz has been loaned to us until the end of this season, we also have a guaranteed buy-out option."

But his return to Polish football at Lech has not worked out well and he made just two sub appearances this season for the club in the league.

And Lech Poznan announced this week Zukowski would return to Rangers, where he still has two-and-a-half years left and faces an uncertain future.

They stated: "The four players we have on loan - Dominik Holec (Sparta Prague), Artur Rudko (Metalist Kharkiv), Heorhij Citaishvili (Dynamo Kyiv) and Mateusz Zukowski (Rangers FC) will leave and return to their clubs."

Meanwhile, Michael Beale will dig deep into his Rangers squad for the trip to Hibernian on Sunday but he is determined to build on the recent upswing in form.

The Light Blues, guaranteed to finish runners-up to cinch Premiership champions Celtic for a second successive season, go into the game on the back of a morale-boosting 3-0 win over their Old Firm rivals at Ibrox last weekend.

That first win of the season over the Hoops followed a 1-0 home win over Aberdeen, after losing to both of those teams in the previous two matches.

Defender Connor Goldson is a doubt for the Easter Road game and could be added to a lengthy injury list which includes Borna Barisic, Ben Davies, Ryan Kent, Antonio Colak, Kemar Roofe, Tom Lawrence, Steven Davis and Filip Helander while on-loan attacker Malik Tillman is now back at Bayern Munich with a hamstring problem which has ended his season.

The Gers boss said: “In terms of the young players, we’ve lost Bailey Rice and Zak Lovelace to international duty with Scotland and England Under-17s, at the Euros.

“So there will be one or two others get an opportunity.

“There’s players that have been injured for big parts of the season that need an opportunity as well and we are going to need everyone.

“We probably have 16 players to get us through the last three games next week: Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday.

“We want to end the season well. We know the teams we are playing this week are still in the hunt for European places, so they are not slowing down.

“It is important for us that after two home wins against Aberdeen and Celtic that we back that up this weekend.”