St Mirren mull over emergency transfer options after latest injury as teenager's Celtic debut gets seal of approval

St Mirren may be forced to sign a goalkeeper on an emergency loan for the rest of the season after injury derailed their Scottish Cup semi-final hopes.

Already without first-choice keeper Shamal George due to injury, his deputy Ryan Mullen picked up a knock just 14 minutes into the Hampden clash with Celtic. He was replaced by 17-year-old Grant Tamosevicius, who was making his first senior appearance. St Mirren went on to lose 6-2 after extra time and while the teenager fared well in a baptism of fire, head coach Craig McLeish admits they may need to bring in a new No 1 swiftly.

Mullen hurt his thigh and George was spotted in a moon boot. St Mirren are three points above the relegation play-off position in the Premiership and face Livingston in their first bottom-six match next weekend.

Ryan Mullen picked up an injury early on for St Mirren. | SNS Group

“I think he said when he went to kick, I think he's caught the ground,” McLeish commented on Mullen. “He's pulled his thigh muscle. We need to assess him over the next few days and see how that looks.”

On George, McLeish continued: “We're not sure how long that will be. He got a scan yesterday. We're still waiting on the results for that. There may be a chance that he's back in relatively quickly with it, depending on the scan results, we just have to see what that looks like.”

Asked if St Mirren may need to scour the loan market, McLeish answered: “That's something we might need to look at and assess.”

Keeper gets seal of approval

McLeish was full of praise for Tamosevicius’ performance on his debut and attributed no blame to the academy product for the defeat.

“Grant comes in and I think that was his debut for us,” said McLeish. “I brought him to the club probably when he was maybe about 13. He's a fantastic young goalkeeper. We've got really high hopes for him. He didn't deserve that scoreline to end up the way he performed and dealt with a lot of things. He's the future of what we're trying to do in the goalkeeping department.

“He looked nervy when he first came on, built himself into the game, made some good saves. It's bits like that that I hurt more for the boys and some of the individuals. Some of the individual performances were really strong throughout the day.”

McLeish urged his players not to let the pain of defeat linger in a relegation battle. They showed resilience to fight back from 2-0 down and force extra time after Mikael Mandron’s brace and the manager admitted attacking changes when chasing the game left them short in extra time.

“We've had that conversation just in the changing room there,” added McLeish. “It hurts. It needs to hurt. If it doesn't hurt, there's something wrong with us. It has to hurt for today. We have to get over it very quickly.

“The boys will be back in on Tuesday. When we come back in on Tuesday, our full focus has to be on Livingston. Our big challenge now is we have to retain our status in the league.

“If we play like that for the majority of how we played today and for the majority of the games that I've been in charge of, I think that second-half performance was probably the best since I've led the team.

“I'm so proud of them with how they fought back from 2-0. If we do that more often than not throughout the remaining five games, then we'll put ourselves in a good position come the end of the season.”

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