ALLY McCOIST will seek to have Rangers' Petrofac Training Cup quarter-final against East Fife on September 6 postponed because of international call-ups, and has championed a Scotland return for his striker Kris Boyd.
The Rangers manager will again make use of SPFL regulations which allow clubs to have fixtures moved if they have three or more players selected for international duty.
The midfielder Lewis Macleod was named yesterday in Billy Stark's Scotland Under-21 squad, with games in Slovakia on Thursday, September 4 and Differdange against Luxembourg on Monday, September 8.
A provisional request has been made to Rangers for the release of Dean Shiels for Northern Ireland's Euro 2016 qualifier in Hungary on September 7 and the same paperwork has been lodged for Bilel Mohsni by Tunisia, who open up their Africa Cup of Nations qualifying campaign at home to Botswana on September 6 and a trip to Egypt four days later.
McCoist invoked the rule last season to have League 1 fixtures against Dunfermline Athletic and Forfar Athletic postponed and he has defended his decision to do it again.
He said: "If we have these players away we will definitely seek to have the East Fife game postponed. We have set a precedent for doing it and I don't see any reason why we wouldn't do it. If we did it last year, which we did do, it might be the case that people would look upon it as being a bit disrespectful if we didn't do it again. Plus, the obvious scenario is we want as strong a squad as possible to take on anybody."
McCoist, meanwhile, insists that Kris Boyd and Lee Wallace can force their way back into Gordon Strachan's plans having been overlooked for the match with Germany on September 7. "[Kris] has been playing well," said McCoist. "An in-form Kris Boyd would be an asset for anybody. If Gordon thinks Lee Wallace deserves to be in his squad then he will be but what Lee has to do is obviously play well for Rangers."
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