Robbie Neilson rues Hearts injury woes as 11 players struggle for fitness ahead of St Mirren clash

Hearts have all but secured third place in the Scottish Premiership as they maintain a 13-point advantage over their rivals – but the injuries are now piling up for Robbie Neilson' s side.

Next up is a Scottish Cup tie against St Mirren and Neilson admits there are up to 11 players struggling with knocks ahead of the clash.

However he's confident he will still be able to put a side capable of winning for Saturday night's quarter-final at Tynecastle.

The Jambos only had 14 outfield players at training on Thursday. Two of them are on development loans and cannot face the Buddies, while several key players such as Craig Halkett were only in doing 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."

In remarkable circumstances, the Gorgie club 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.

Concerns that Souttar may have suffered another Achilles injury, however, 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