Falkirk winger Ethan Ross out with ‘quite a serious’ ankle injury

Falkirk have been hit by an early-season blow after key winger Ethan Ross suffered what manager John McGlynn described as “quite a serious” ankle injury.

The 23-year-old – a regular starter over the previous two campaigns as the Bairns romped to back-to-back title wins to seal a return to the William Hill Premiership – limped off in clear discomfort in the first half of last weekend’s 3-1 defeat at Livingston.

Speaking ahead of Friday’s Premier Sports Cup second-round trip to Celtic, McGlynn, although awaiting further clarity, revealed the prognosis was not positive.

“Unfortunately, it’s quite a serious one actually,” said the manager. “He got a scan on it, there’s some ligament damage and he’s now going to go and see a specialist to see if they might need to do some kind of surgery on it.

“I don’t have any timescale, I’m not really sure about that until we get the specialist to look over the scan, and decide what they want to do.

“There’s still a fair amount of swelling, so it wasn’t necessarily conclusive as to whether or not it was torn completely, or if it was still kind of intact, then maybe they don’t need to operate.

“It’s a blow for him and for the team because he’s a big player for us and he’s been doing particularly well.”

McGlynn has only been able to recruit four new faces so far this summer as he is holding out in the hope of securing some players on loan from English Premier League clubs. He admitted the wait was proving “frustrating” but remained hopeful that he could add another three before the window closed.

“We think we’re getting a little bit close, we’re hoping that because the window closes in a couple of weeks or so,” he said.

“There’s nothing new and nothing necessarily imminent, so I don’t see us having anyone new in before the game tomorrow.

“But I would like to think maybe in a week’s time…not that we’re in control of these, we’ve got to wait on clubs giving us these players.

“We’ve been very, very patient and we’re working with the clubs to try and get these deals done, but we don’t have anyone imminent.”

Ross joins Finn Yeats, Barney Stewart, Coll Donaldson, Jamie Sneddon and Tom Lang in missing the trip to Celtic Park through injury.

McGlynn is hoping his side can conjure a repeat of the display they produced in last season’s quarter-final, when they led Brendan Rodgers’ side 2-1 up to the 70th minute before going down 5-2.

“For us, a reference was how well we did there last season,” he said. “We’ve got to take a bit of confidence and belief from that.

“We’re always going to create chances with the type of team we are. We want to come out of Celtic Park with our heads held high and – who knows? – maybe in the quarter-finals.”