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Edinburgh Live
Edinburgh Live
Sport
Ross Pilcher

Robbie Neilson reveals Hearts' injury numbers for St Mirren Scottish Cup clash and makes youngsters admission

Robbie Neilson could be without up to 11 Hearts players for the weekend meeting against St Mirren.

But he expects to have around six of them fit to make the squad fo the Scottish Cup quarter-final clash.

Last weekend's point away to Dundee United was costly, with five of the visitor's starting XI having to be subbed off after getting injured.

Gary Mackay-Steven, Alex Cochrane, Nathaniel Atkinson, Cammy Devlin and John Souttar all had their afternoons ended early.

Craig Gordon and Josh Ginnelly both needed treatment on the pitch as the Jambos' squad was severely tested.

Numbers at training this morning were on the low side, but Neilson insists Saturday's XI will be a strong one.

"We’ve managed to get through the season having very few injuries, then all of a sudden we get a number of them within a few days," he said.

"We don’t have a big squad, but we’ve got a good quality squad so we should be fine.

"John Souttar has an ankle problem, but I’m not going to go through them all individually because I could be here for an hour talking about wee niggles here or wee injuries there.

"Our focus is to make sure we get a team Saturday. We’ll have a team and it’ll be a strong team. Whether we have the depth of squad we’ve had recently, as in nine on the bench, we’re probably not going to get to that. We’re looking at maybe four or five.

"But the ones that we’ll have will be of good quality.

"At this moment in time, we’ve got 11 players that are carrying knocks. There won’t be 11 out on Saturday - I’d expect to probably have six of them back. That’s where we are.

"It’s not that difficult. We’ve got the team ready for the weekend and I know 90 per cent of who’s going to start the game. We’ve got one or two that are a wee bit borderline and they’ll get tested on Saturday morning.

"Because we went with a small, but quality squad, any one of the 18 first-team players we’ve got here can easily go into the starting XI and we’ll be a top-four team.

"The majority of them are contact injuries anyway so there’s nothing you can do about them. The likes of Cochrane and GMS were contact injuries and it’s just the luck of the game. We just need to deal with it.

John Souttar limps off injured (SNS)

"Some will be one or two days, some will be a couple of weeks and some will be four weeks. But we’ve got a good squad that can handle it."

Some of Steven Naismith’s U18 squad, who have reached the final of the Scottish Youth Cup, could be drafted in to fill spots on the bench.

Neilson continued: "Only if we need to fill the bench. We made a decision at the start of the season to put most of the guys who are not in the first-team squad but above the U18s out on loan, because we don’t have a reserve league. They’ll stay on their development loans so it will be the younger ones. But it’s a good experience for them if they’re needed.

"They’ve been going well. We’ve got some good young players here and good ones out on loan. The difficulty is do you keep them here for moments like this, where they’re maybe getting on the bench once or twice a season? Or do you put them out on loan?

"Connor Smith will come back in the summer having played 40 games, challenging for a title and playing in cup games. We made the decision to allow them to go out and develop."

Hearts are 90 minutes from a return to Hampden, having reached the final of the competition back in 2020, and it’s something Neilson hopes is a regular occurrence.

"It’s massive for us," he admitted. "A club of Hearts’ stature, we want to be winning trophies, at the top end of the league and getting European football.

"The Scottish Cup is a huge opportunity for us. We’ve managed to get to the last eight and we’ve got a home game. We want to get to the last four, the last two then eventually win it."

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