Murray Davidson faces an anxious wait before he discovers how long he will be out of action.
The St Johnstone midfielder “felt a crack” in his ankle during the warm-up ahead of Wednesday night’s clash with Rangers.
He’s a definite non-starter again for the visit of Partick Thistle to McDiarmid Park today but manager Tommy Wright does not yet know whether it will be a case of months not weeks that he is sidelined.
“It’s not good,” Wright reported.
“He’ll miss a period of time. How long that will be, we don’t know.
“Until the specialist has another look at it we’ll not know a time-frame.
“There’s some damage to the bone. He just felt a crack when he was warming-up. There wasn’t any contact.
“We’re prepared for him to be out for a few weeks at the least. The likelihood is it will be Monday before we know how long.
“It’s disappointing because he’s been playing well but we are a club that has good strength in midfield.
“That’s why I was keen to get extra people in during the summer. The way Murray plays, he’s 100% and he does miss some games and the Chris Millar situation wasn’t ideal from my point of view.
“We’re lucky that we’ve got options and they’re experienced options. It’s a concern for Murray but we’ll deal with it.”
Millar was a late replacement for Davidson and Wright now has to decide whether he should be playing two games in four days.
“He was disappointed he wasn’t in the team but I’ve told him that’s the way it is this year,” Wright said.
“If you lose your place and somebody does well, they stay in the team. The good professional that he is he was ready to step in and I thought he was excellent.
“He obviously tired towards the end and we’ll have a look at how he’s recovered. Again, we have to manage him.”
On today’s match, Wright observed: “We’ve had an excellent start. It’s our best in recent years. So we’re in a good position.
“But if we need a warning, we got it against Kilmarnock. Everybody expected us to win but it doesn’t automatically happen like that.”
Joe Gormley is unavailable after returning to Northern Ireland for personal reasons.
