Brian Easton is set to undergo a hernia operation that could keep the St Johnstone defender out of action for at least a month.
Perth boss Tommy Wright confirmed that going under the knife is the likely scenario for a player whose season has already been disrupted by injury, though there is a remote chance of “nursing him” through to the end of the season.
“Brian Easton will probably be getting a hernia operation on Thursday,” said Wright. “It might be a double. He has an appointment set up with a specialist in England.
“There might be the option of nursing him through to the end of the season but an operation is more likely.
“In that case we’d expect him to be out for between four and six weeks.
“He has had a stop-start time of it and he didn’t get a pre-season under his belt when we were preparing for Europe.
“But it has come to a head now and we need to get it sorted.”
Meanwhile, Wright is keeping his fingers crossed that tonight’s fourth round Scottish Cup tie against Albion Rovers doesn’t get called off for a second time.
“We need to get this game played for a couple of reasons,” he said.
“We don’t want a backlog of fixtures building up because we don’t know what the weather will be like over the next few weeks.
“Also, it is important to get a game under our belts before playing Partick Thistle on Saturday.
“It would be a concern if we went into that one without getting a game after the winter break. The likelihood is that they will have had two games.
“The weather seems to be getting milder and they have got most of the snow off the pitch at Cliftonhill. The forecast seems to be promising and hopefully it will be fine.”
Wright reported that there had been “no progress” regarding potential signings.
