Peter Haring’s spell on sidelines confirmed as Hearts assess how to guard against injuries

Peter Haring took a calculated risk by playing in the Scottish Cup Final

The Austrian has been assessed by two specialists in a bid to get to the bottom of the pelvic problem which has plagued him for most of this year, and the consensus is that he will need several weeks of rest to allow the inflammation to go down. “It looks like he is going to be out for a couple of months,” said Levein.

“That is what we expected and we’re going to treat it conservatively and give him a bit longer to rest up.”

Levein admits that rushing Haring back for the Scottish Cup final against Celtic in May has caused a setback.

“Bringing him back for the cup final was the reason it didn’t clear up properly,” he said. “We knew it was a risk and Peter was happy to play in the cup final.

“Sometimes you take a chance and as long as the player is fully on board I don’t mind doing that. Peter is fine about it. It’s just now about waiting until he gets up to speed.”

Haring was one of several Hearts players who suffered injury lay-offs last term and Levein confirmed that management have been assessing the way they work to see if they can guard against such problems going forward.

“Most of them were impact injuries and most happened in games,” said Levein.

“We’ve looked at the whole thing in great depth and we couldn’t find any pattern or any reason for it.

“We train on a lot of different pitches here and we decided we’re going to stick to a couple to see if using the same surfaces helps.”