SPFL Premiership match at Motherwell may bring a chance for the Norwegian

Christian Borchgrevink is a strong contender to start his second Premiership match for Hearts at Motherwell on Saturday. The Norwegian right-back has made just two league appearances this season since arriving from Valerenga and is poised to play a bit more often in the weeks ahead.

A thigh injury suffered in the opening Premiership fixture against Aberdeen ruled Borchgrevink out for several weeks and he has had to be patient since recovering. It took him time to regain a place in Hearts’ matchday squad, with midfielder Oisin McEntee preferred at right-back. Borchgrevink was an unused substitute against Dundee and Dundee United earlier this month. He then reappeared on the pitch on Sunday as a 73rd-minute substitute, coincidentally, against Aberdeen.

Hearts head coach Derek McInnes expects the 26-year-old defender to make more appearances and may promote him to the starting line-up this weekend. McInnes told the Edinburgh News that Borchgrevink would have been in the team at Pittodrie and was unfortunate to be left out, purely as a precaution.

“We had actually lined up with Borch potentially starting on Sunday,” McInnes explained. “We were also starting Michael Steinwender, who hasn't had a lot of minutes, Frankie Kent hasn't had a lot of minutes, Landry Kabore hasn't had a lot of minutes, and neither has Tomas Magnusson. That's four players who didn't have a lot of game time. We just thought that adding another one into the mix could potentially leave us vulnerable, but he was close to making the starting line-up. He did well when he went on. Christian is getting into a better rhythm now in terms of training days and he is becoming more of an option for us.”

The result was Hearts’ first league defeat of the campaign under McInnes. The manager is convinced there is sufficient character and resilience within his squad to react positively at Fir Park. “I actually don't think that's in question, but it's the first time we've lost a league game,” he said.

“If somebody said at the start of the season that we would be top of the league and it would take until late November before we lost a game and had this feeling, then you would take that. We wanted to keep this feeling as far away from us as possible but we were always going to lose a game. The next part is the reaction. I'm confident the reaction will be fine. We've sold 4,600 tickets for Motherwell. We know who we play for. We know how important it is to get back into a winning rhythm again and hopefully we can do that on Saturday.”

Hearts are hopeful that both Lawrence Shankland and Stuart Findlay could be fit to take part against Motherwell. Both players had injuries scanned in recent days, along with Brazilian midfielder Ageu.