RANGERS take on Lyon at the Groupama Stadium on Thursday evening with both clubs already qualified from their Europa League group.

With that in mind, each side is expected to make changes to personnel as a result.

Here are the three key issues facing Light Blues boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst ahead of the game.

Chance for fringe players to impress

Thursday’s game presents an opportunity to a host of players who have yet to feature or have barely featured under the van Bronckhorst regime.

The Dutchman confirmed he will look to use players who haven’t played a great deal in his pre-match press conference where he said: “For the players who come in it’s always good to have minutes. The downside of being a coach with a big squad and with good players is to disappoint players every game.

"That’s something that’s not easy to do but you have to do it so when you have a chance to give those players a chance to play it’s always a nice feeling and for the players as well because some players didn’t play as much in recent weeks but they gave everything in training and their mentality is really good so I’m very pleased to give some players minutes tomorrow.”

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Up till now, van Bronckhorst hasn’t deviated much in terms of team selection but with nothing riding on the game other than prize money you can expect more changes than have been seen before.

It will likely offer a chance for the likes of Nathan Patterson, John Lundstram, Juninho Bacuna, Scott Wright and Kemar Roofe to stake a claim.

With the January transfer window just around the corner you sense the time is ripe to show their new boss what they are capable of.

Coming up against former Feyenoord teammate

Van Bronckhorst will go up against his former De Kuip buddy Peter Bosz. The Dutchman says he has played a significant role in his career both as a player and as a coach. Ahead of the match, he said:

“He was there my whole career when I was a young player coming from the academy Peter Bosz was the captain of the team. He really welcomed me into the squad and was very helpful. After that, he was the technical director of Feyenoord after I came back in 2017 after my time in Barcelona so we had a lot of conversations about the future of the club and my role in that.

"Being a head coach now, we played a lot against each other when he was with Heracles, Vitesse and even Ajax. I really enjoyed our friendship over the years and he’s been there almost my whole career.”

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In terms of coming up against Bosz as a manager, van Bronckhorst’s Feyenoord side beat his Vitesse team 2-0 in the early part of the 2015/16 season.

When Bosz joined Ajax for the 2016/17 campaign, he won once and drew against van Bronckhorst’s championship-winning team.

It’ll be an interesting tussle between the two on Thursday evening, there is almost an apprentice versus master feeling to it in the opposing dugouts.

Does the result really matter?

In the grand scheme of things, no.

Despite losing their opening two group games, Rangers cemented their 2nd place finish by beating Sparta Prague at Ibrox in van Bronckhorst’s first game as manager. Failure to take anything from Lyon won’t be considered a disaster.

That being said, momentum is a vital component in football and given he’s enjoyed a 100% start to his managerial career at Ibrox, if he were to maintain that heading to Tynecastle on Sunday it would be mightily impressive and add to the growing optimism surrounding the club under the new regime.

Lyon have a long list of injuries and the timing may be perfect to pull off another famous result in the French city famous for its food and industry.