Hearts’ injury problems increase ahead of St Mirren cup tie

Hearts have 11 players struggling with knocks ahead of their Scottish Cup tie against St Mirren.

But Robbie Neilson is confident he will be able to put out a strong team for Saturday night’s quarter-final at Tynecastle.

The Jambos only had 14 outfield players at training on Thursday and two of them are on development loans and cannot face the Buddies, while the likes of Craig Halkett were only taking part in light training.

Neilson said: “We have a number of players injured so we will give the majority of them until the last minute. Some of them did a wee bit of training (on Thursday), some of them will do some (on Friday), some will do a fitness test on Saturday morning.”

Hearts had five players go off injured during last Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Dundee United – John Souttar, Nathaniel Atkinson, Alex Cochrane, Gary Mackay-Steven and Cammy Devlin.

Michael Smith definitely remains out with a back problem, while Josh Ginnelly and Peter Haring were among those who sat out training on Thursday.

Fears that Souttar might have suffered another Achilles injury have been allayed.

Neilson said: “It’s an ankle problem but I’m not going to go through them all individually because I could be here for the next hour.

“At this moment in time we have 11 players carrying knocks. It won’t be 11 that will be out on Saturday. I would expect to probably have six of them back.

“I know about 90 per cent of who will start the game, there are one or two who are a bit borderline.

“There will be ones that will be a day, there will be some that are two days, there will be some that are two weeks, there are some that will be three to four weeks, but we have a squad that can handle it.”

The Hearts manager may have to utilise Under-18 players to fill