Hamilton Accies boss Stuart Taylor admits defender Matthew Shiels is still a long way off making his debut for the club.
The 21-year-old left-back joined the club in May on a pre-contract agreement from Rangers and officially started with Accies in June.
He has shaken off an ankle problem and bone bruising that hampered his arrival, but although he joined his team-mates in training for the first time in mid-September, he is still a number of weeks away from pulling on an Accies jersey.
Shiels hasn't kicked a ball in competitive action since December 2020, when he was on loan at Clyde from Rangers, and any hope of seeing him help out the Accies squad anytime soon has been shot down by Taylor.
He said: "Matthew has come through another week [of training], which is good.
"But he has been out for a long time.
"I think he's been out just short of a year, he's not played any game or anything like that, so we need to get a good amount of friendly games under his belt before we can look at getting him in the first team.
"That's something we will try and make happen for him."
Meanwhile, Taylor could be sweating on the fitness of Miko Virtanen after he revealed the defender played through the pain barrier during Friday's 6-1 defeat to Partick Thistle.
And he also revealed Andy Winter is on his way back after a knee injury that's kept him out for eight months. He last played in Hamilton's 4-1 win over Motherwell in February.
Taylor said: "Miko shouldn't really have went through the game the other night. He was struggling with his hip, but the type of character he is he wanted to play through it.
"We did a fitness test before the game and he went through that.
"We didn't have a replacement in terms of the middle of the pitch, so all credit to Miko for that.
"We'll need to wait and see how he is for Saturday.
"The good news is Andy Winter is coming along well and hopefully he will do a little bit of work maybe Thursday/Friday.
"So that looks good for next week in terms of him being in with the lads."
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