MOTHERWELL have been dealt an injury blow as manager Stephen Robinson revealed that Craig Tanner has undergone further surgery on his knee injury, meaning the attacker may not be back in action until the new year.

Tanner has been sidelined since dislocating his kneecap in training back in March and was initially expected to be out for around six months.

But his recovery has not gone as well as had been hoped and he was forced to go back under the knife yesterday, leaving him unlikely to return to the Fir Park first-team picture for quite some time yet.

“Craig’s having another operation,” Robinson said. “He’s just not progressed as much as we’d want so going to do some surgery on him. He’s somebody we miss in terms of that creativity.

“We’d hoped maybe to have him back before Christmas. He’s still not had the results from the surgery, we’ll pop up to see him later.

“We’re just waiting to hear the outcome once they’ve gone inside the knee because it hasn’t quite progressed as we’d want it.

“It’s tough for him. He’s a great boy. Him and Charles Dunne have tried to keep each other motivated. I had them scouting for me on Saturday just to try and keep them involved and motivated

“It’s horrible but we’ve got a good staff here. They spend hours with these boys and mentally it is tough for them when they’re injured.”

There was a mixture of good and bad news on the short-term injury front for Robinson ahead of today’s trip to Aberdeen, with goalkeeper Trevor Carson being given every chance to make the starting line-up after news on the ankle injury sustained against Hearts last week was better than had been expected.

Striker Curtis Main will however sit out the trip to Pittodrie with a minor injury, although he may have missed the game in any case as his wife went into labour yesterday.

“Trevor will hopefully try and train [on Friday],” said Robinson. “He got the all clear injury wise in terms of any serious damage, but he’ll be a late decision for us.

“It’s a relief because superficially it didn’t look great. We were hopeful because he was able to put weight on it straight away that it wasn’t broken.

“As I said at the time we were hoping it was just superficial and it proved to be.”

Robinson concedes that he is still trying to find the right blend in attack, with Main, Danny Johnson, Ryan Bowman and Conor Sammon vying for a place in attack, but he is please with his options even with Main being unable to play at Aberdeen.

“I think we’re on the right track,” he said. “We’re solid, we’re organised, and we just missed a little bit of invention inside that final third and that’s up for me to try and find that and keep working on it.

“People are saying to me maybe Main and Sammon didn’t work together. They played two games so I’m not sure how that judgement was made that early.

“But the fact Curtis isn’t available, and we’ve got Sammon coming back available again, Bowman coming back to fitness, you’ve got to remember he was out for four or five weeks and Danny as well.

“I thought we had it right with Main and Danny for a few games and we’ve got a lot of fire power to come off the bench.

“Danny’s just come up it’s his first season. There’s lots of aspects of his game that can improve but he’s got potential to go on and do very well for the club.

“I’m glad we strengthened. In situations like this with Curtis out it does give us a stronger option.”