Hearts manager Robbie Neilson admits that he will have to make a late call on the fitness of star striker Lawrence Shankland ahead of tomorrow's huge match against Celtic at Tynecastle in the quarter final of the Scottish Cup.
The stand in skipper, who is captaining the Jambos in the absence of Craig Gordon, missed Wednesday night's 3-1 Premiership defeat to the Hoops at Parkhead, where the visitors had taken an early lead through a goal from Josh Ginnnelly.
However Ange Postecoglou's Celtic equalised thanks to Daizen Maeda, and then went onto complete the turnaround with goals from Kyogo Furuhashi and Sead Haksabanovic.
But Neilson is hopeful that his talisman will be fit enough to start tomorrow's cup tie, which promises to be a fiery encounter with a place at Hampden in the semi finals up for grabs.
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Shankland has netted 21 goals in 37 appearances in all competitions this season, and is a certainty to be named in Steve Clarke's Scotland squad for the EURO 2024 qualifiers later this month.
Speaking to the media ahead of the game, Neilson said: "Lawrence Shankland didn’t train today so he’ll be touch and go. We’ll make a game-time decision on him. He’s such an important player for us so he has to be bang on if he’s going to play.
"A couple of the other ones will make it so there will be a couple of changes but not a huge amount of changes."
The former MK Dons boss wants his team to take the game to Celtic tomorrow in front of their own fans. He added: "We want to be on the front foot, we want to be aggressive and we did it the other night. We have to do that on Saturday.
"Playing a team back-to-back means there is not a lot of time to alter things between games. The players have had a training session and a half session but some of that time has been spent on recovery from Wednesday.
"We will stick to our principles and how we want to play, but Celtic are such a good team. If is important we don’t lose goals and, if you do that, you have a chance."
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