Dundee United winger Gary Mackay-Steven will be left to decide whether or not he needs the knee surgery which could rule him out of action for up to six weeks.
The 21-year-old returned to training on Tuesday after missing Sunday’s derby but has been told by a surgeon that an operation could ease the pain the attacker has been feeling in his knee in recent weeks.
Having said that, Mackay-Steven could potentially be available for selection for Saturday’s trip to Kilmarnock should he have no adverse reaction to training this week.
With that the scenario facing him, United manager Peter Houston revealed that the decision on Mackay-Steven going under the knife is entirely up to the player himself.
”He’s got a slight degeneration in his knee, saw the surgeon yesterday, and it’s one of those ones that if we had a winter break he could go in and get it cleaned up ‘like that’ but loads of players can play through this kind of thing,” he said.
”There isn’t an available slot to get him operated on until the beginning of next week so what the doctor says is to go and train because it’s not going to make it any worse, and see how it feels.
”Players manage this and if you’re mentally all right then you’ll get on with it, but we can’t assume that Gary is the same type of boy as that.
”Some players can handle it, some players can’t. But there’s no pressure from me with regards to it, so he’s going to train for the next few days and he might be available for Saturday.
”It’s a degeneration built up since he got into the team it’s not just happened over the last two weeks, but it’s something that’s gradually happened.
”We’re going to manage it over the next four to five days and if I feel and he feels that he would rather get it done I’d let him get it done because I would know I was going to be without him for that period of time.
”He’s going to train with us this week and see how he gets on, but there’s a possibility he might go in for a wee clean-up job on Monday or Tuesday next week. We’ll deal with that if it comes along but I won’t put any pressure on the boy.”
Following the 3-0 victory over neighbours Dundee, United sit proudly atop the SPL table going into this weekend’s set of fixtures but the manager isn’t getting carried away.
”I think the reason we can keep our feet firmly on the ground is because we never reached the standards we can on Sunday,” he said.
”I know it was a derby and it was brilliant to win but I would rather have the performance of the Hibs game than the performance of the Dundee game and that tells us everything.
”The players were disappointed at half-time because we were winning 3-0 but they hardly kicked a ball, which was their words. That’s a sign of a good team that you can win and not be at your best.
”We can play better and the game against Hibs showed how well we can play, pass the ball, shift it about and get at teams, and create lots of chances, but on Sunday we didn’t get anywhere near that standard.”
Houston has dismissed reports linking him with a move for Swindon Town’s Paul Caddis who has previously been on loan at Tannadice as ”false” but said he was optimistic of seeing the club’s appeal against the red card shown to Johnny Russell’s on Sunday prove successful.
He noted: ”At the time when I saw it I thought we had a wee chance of maybe getting Johnny off and I’m still hopeful. But it’s not us or the referee who decides, it’s the people who decide it when they look at the footage. We’ll just have to wait and see.”