The news from Aberdeen of Clark Robertson's latest injury - he was on the verge of challenging for a first-team place after several months of recuperation from a serious knee problem - might prompt Derek McInnes, the Pittodrie manager, to regret his decision to allow young defender Joe Shaughnessy to depart on loan to Falkirk.
With Aberdeen preparing to face Celtic at Parkhead on Saturday, McInnes expressed his disappointment last night that Robertson, hurt while on Scotland under-21 duty during their 1-1 draw in Slovakia, will now be sidelined for up to six weeks.
The left-back, whose knee was operated on following an injury against Motherwell last October and who only returned to the first team for the game against St Johnstone at the tail end of last season, had been included in recent McInnes squads.
Aside from losing his services, Aberdeen are without captain Russell Anderson, in rehabilitation for the next six weeks following knee surgery and, with Shaughnessy elsewhere, defensive cover is now light.
"It's far from ideal," McInnes said. "I'm disappointed because Clark has worked hard to get fit. We were looking forward to getting him back and trying to force his way into the first team. It is quite an unusual injury because he was well into the game and he has been back training for seven or eight weeks with us.
"He had finished his rehab and to pick up another injury is really disappointing for the boy because he had worked really hard to get himself back into the reckoning. We were hopeful he would have come back from the under-21 games champing at the bit and ready to push himself back into a starting place."
McInnes disclosed that he had rejected a bid from Ross County to take Robertson on loan last month as he felt the youngster was on the verge of regaining his best form.
Midfielder Willo Flood, kept out of the side for Aberdeen's win over Partick Thistle before the international break, has been back in full training since Monday with no ill effects and is ready to go at Parkhead. "If we had risked him he could have made it worse and we didn't want to take that chance," said McInnes.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article