Hearts and Celtic with injury doubts for Scottish Cup clash - but duo set to give huge boost

Hearts and Celtic could both be without forward players for their meeting in the Scottish Cup quarter-final at Tynecastle Park.

The teams met in the Premiership on Wednesday night with Ange Postecoglou and Robbie Neilson making changes to their teams from the weekend wins with Saturday afternoon’s clash in mind.

Hearts were without the likes of Lawrence Shankland, Robert Snodgrass and Alex Cochrane, while Josh Ginnelly, who put the team in front during a 3-1 defeat, was replaced with a knock. Neilson said he is going to be “fine” but he will likely be without Yutaro Oda after the Japanese forward sustained an injury which forced him off despite having replaced Ginnelly.

“He (Ginnelly) wanted to play on but I took him off as a precaution,” he said. “He will be fine for Saturday. Lawrence Shankland is the same. If it was a cup final tonight he would have played. We felt another couple of days’ rest and he should be okay. The only one missing will probably be Yutaro Oda. He got a kick on the foot and is going for a scan.”

Meanwhile, Celtic face a wait over the fitness of Daizen Maeda. The 25-year-old picked up a knock on his knee when netting the Celtic equaliser his manager confirmed.

“He got a knock on his knee when he scored the goal,” said Postecoglou, who was left irritated with elements of his team’s play. “He’s a bit sore now and we’ll just have to wait and see. I don’t think it’s anything serious, but there’s another short turnaround to Saturday so we’ll just have to see how he is.”