Tuesday, March 19, 2024
SportHeartsEast Fife boss admits injury crisis has left him struggling to put...

East Fife boss admits injury crisis has left him struggling to put a team together for Hearts trip

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East Fife player/manager Darren Young has urged the SPFL to consider allowing clubs to play trialists in the Betfred Cup after revealing that an injury-crisis has left him short of players for Saturday’s trip to Hearts.

Jonathan Page, Kevin Smith, Chris Kane, Tom Cordery, Ross Mutch and Mark Lamont are are expected to miss the trip to Tynecastle, while Kyle Wilkie will be named on the bench but will have no chance of playing.

Former Aberdeen midfielder Young, 38, was forced to bring himself on in the midweek penalty shoot out defeat to Dunfermline and insists the league body should be doing more to help part-time clubs.

He said: “It’s been a challenging time since I’ve been at the club, we got two more injuries the other night against Dunfermline so that takes us up to seven.

“For a part-time club, that’s quite severe.

“I’ll probably only be able to name three subs against Hearts, including myself and Kyle, who won’t play.

“It’s hard because of the situation we’re in because you can’t play trialists. It’s different if you’re full-time because you can fall back on youngsters but at this level, if you get a few injuries then you’re suffering

“You don’t want to be signing trialists just to help dig you out of a situation. This competition also comes very early in the season so it gives you very little time to look at trialists in friendlies and in training.”

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