Dundee boss Gordon Chisholm has admitted he’s hamstrung as he seeks to get a clutch of players match fit because he can’t chance further depleting his squad.
Ideally Chisholm would have arranged a friendly this midweek to help bring Dominic Shimmin, Charlie Grant and Jamie Adams along.
But with Eric Paton, Rhys Weston and Mickael Antoine-Curier sidelined the Dark Blues are down to the bare bones.
“You want boys to get their match fitness up but dare you risk taking on a bounce game when someone you are relying on might go and get hurt,” he said.
“It’s a difficult one because we don’t have a big enough squad to handle extra matches.
“When you are sitting with 15 players it’s a Catch 22 situation.
“We couldn’t have done anything this week.
“And a closed-doors match is out of the question next midweek because we have the cup-tie at Brechin.
“But once we get to the international break, hopefully our injuries will have cleared up and I might try to organise something then.”
Chisholm revealed that with Nicky Riley suspended and Paton, Weston and Antoine-Curier sidelined he very nearly had to draft in an untested youngster for the bench at Partick last weekend after Brian Kerr reported for the game suffering from a stomach bug.
“Brian turned up on Saturday morning feeling ill and we’d to wait until we got to the park to see if his stomach had settled before sorting our line-up,” he disclosed.
“If he hadn’t been up to going on the bench I’d have had to hand one of the kids a sub’s shirt and frankly none of the youngsters here are ready.
“We are running with a really tight squad at the moment so I’ve had a word with the boys about watching the contact stuff in training.”