Derek McInnes confirmed Beni Baningime has a chance of making Saturday’s match against Aberdeen but added that Ageu will miss the remainder of the season and Stuart Findlay will be unavailable for the next six weeks.
Oisin McEntee visited a specialist on Wednesday morning, regarding a shoulder injury, meanwhile Craig Gordon is also unavailable with a shoulder injury, as Lawrence Shankland Cammy Devlin continue to move closer to a return
The Jambos welcome Aberdeen to Tynecastle this Saturday, looking to extend their lead at the top of the Premiership table with Rangers and Celtic facing off on Sunday.
Speaking to the media at the pre-match press conference, McInnes said:
“I think the Scans have come back with varying degrees of success and bad news. I think for us, we just need to try and identify quickly what we're dealing with. As it stands today, I think we've had 11 injuries, so 11 players unavailable to train today.
“We've obviously still got enough to train and put a strong team out and a strong squad out on Saturday, so my focus is the ones that are available, just try to get one or two who are in the 50-50 category available for the weekend.
“The ones who are in that category, Baningime, McEntee and Kerjota, who picked up a little hip strain yesterday. Oisin is away seeing a specialist in Glasgow this morning. Following on from the result of his scan, we got his scan results back late last night, and it was fairly positive, but we just need to get a direction from the specialist today, so hopefully it's good news on that one.
“Beni did some work with the physio yesterday. His scan has come back pretty positive, in the sense that it's more bone bruising type thing, and it's just really trying to get the change of direction into him, and hopefully if he does some work today with the physio and tomorrow, then he'll train Friday. Beni seems quite positive on that.
“The more disappointing aspect is Stu Finlay's picked up a hamstring injury and will be out for six weeks, and Ageu’s thigh injury is going to rule him out for the season. He's going to need an operation, so it's disappointing for him, the boy who's just had no luck at all.
“He's worked so hard. I've never seen a boy really as dedicated to getting back to being fit and desperate to play his part. The boy's heartbroken, and we just need to deal with that now, but he'll not be back now until the pre-season, so we just need to deal with that.
“We've not had him really available to us, but we did feel that in light of some of the injuries we've got, it would be a chance for him to have a big impact between now and the end of the season, and unfortunately that's not going to be the case, so we'll just support him with that.
“Stu's injury is far from ideal, but as it stands, he'll miss the next four games, as it will be with Lawrence, and hopefully the lads will be back for the Motherwell game at the start of April.
“Craig Gordon, again, the scan wasn’t great reading, but Craig's feeling better than what the scan suggests, so he's got a follow-on appointment this morning with a specialist. We'll see where that sits with him, but the likelihood is he's not going to be available for the next couple of weeks, and depending on what the specialist says, it would obviously be a doubt for a Scotland get-together, but Craig is still being positive with it.”
You can watch Derek’s press conference in full on Hearts TV.
