Barrie McKay in Hearts injury blow as Steven Naismith fears layoff will be longer than 'a couple of weeks'

Steven Naismith has admitted Hearts star Barrie McKay’s injury is worse than was first feared. The attacking midfielder injured his knee in Thursday’s 2-1 home defeat to PAOK. McKay missed today’s defeat at Dundee.

HIs technical director admitted he is likely to be facing several weeks out - but they need to wait for a definite time scale from the specialist. Naismith said: "Barrie, I think it's worse than a couple of days or a couple of weeks. We're still waiting to hear back from the specialist. He will probably be out a bit longer than we had hoped. It was strange. He felt it in his knee but the symptoms were showing it might have been calf or hamstring. I think it is more something to do with the knee. Until we hear what the specialist has to say, we aren't going to speculate.”

Calem Nieuwenhof is also struggling with a calf issue and will also miss Thursday’s Europa Conference League play-off in Greece. Naismith added: “Calem has a calf issue at the moment so I imagine he will miss the next couple of games. He isn't that bad.”

Naismith has done the bulk of his transfer business although he hasn’t closed the door on if a late option comes up or one of his current squad moves on. He claimed: "We are constantly looking to improve.

“If something came up that we felt would improve us, we would potentially do something. Some players might move on if they aren't happy, so if we lose players, we might need to replace them.

“We are not actively pushing to try and improve anything at the moment.”