Dundee United manager Jackie McNamara should learn on Friday whether or not Johnny Russell is likely to win his fitness battle ahead of Sunday’s Scottish Cup clash with Dundee.
The striker suffered a leg injury following a 16th minute tackle by Inverness’ Josh Meekings on Wednesday night and had to be substituted, despite gamefully carrying on for a further 22 minutes before being replaced.
Russell, who had scored five goals in five games going into the midweek fixture, is now a doubt for the short trip to Dens Park, but McNamara is likely to assess his fitness at training in St Andrews.
The United boss was understandably displeased with Meekings’ challenge and felt it could have merited more than the yellow card dished out to the Caley player.
“The player touched the ball and then came through him and you can see by the reaction it was a bad one,” he said.
“I didn’t think it was a good challenge at all. He’s certainly very sore, but we’ll have to assess him.”
McNamara said he felt his charges put in a good shift up at Inverness and was pleased with the way his team battled away particularly some of his younger stars.
“I thought the lads put in a tremendous amount of effort,” he said.
“The ones like Michael Gardyne, who have not played a lot of football over the season, I thought he was excellent. And young Stuart Armstrong, when he came on for Johnny, had loads of energy.
“We didn’t start him purely because of the amount of games he’s played recently the Hibs game on Sunday was a big ask because he’s played a lot of football.”
All the talk so far this week has been about the goal that never was Jon Daly’s strike, which appeared to have crossed the line at Inverness but McNamara is keen to move on.
He said: “There’s no point crying about it the linesman said he wasn’t going to guess on it, so we’ve just got to take it on the chin and look towards Sunday.”
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