Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes believes captain Ryan Jack could return from injury before the end of the season.
The midfielder’s campaign looked to have ended when he was stretchered off in Friday’s 2-1 defeat by Hearts at Tynecastle.
However the knee injury, sustained following a challenge from Hearts midfielder Prince Buaben, does not appear to be as bad as first feared.
The Dons are already missing leading-scorer Adam Rooney (thigh tear) and Peter Pawlett (broken arm), while defender Ash Taylor was substituted against Hearts because of a thigh problem.
McInnes said: “Ryan has had his scan and we are just waiting on confirmation of the result.
“He has severe bone bruising on his knee, but we have managed to get the swelling out of the joint.
“We are just waiting to see if the ligaments are intact. While we are hopeful that is the case we are still waiting to get that confirmed.
“Hopefully they are intact and we can settle the knee down as that would rule him in for some of the games before the end of the season.
“We have given Ash’s injury time to settle and he will get scanned tomorrow.
“We also hope to get Peter and Adam back before the end of the season to help our cause.”
The post-split fixtures were announced yesterday with the Dons taking on St Johnstone and Motherwell before a top-of-the-table game against Celtic in Glasgow on Sunday, May 8.
If both sides win their two matches before that meeting then Celtic, who are eight points ahead of Aberdeen, could win the title with a win against the Dons at Parkhead.
Aberdeen will end their campaign with home matches against Hearts and Ross County and McInnes says he has no complaints with the run-in.
He said: “I am absolutely fine with our fixtures. I thought we would get to play Celtic in the second or third game after the split so that was not a surprise.
“But our focus is on the next match, which is St Johnstone a week on Friday.
“Our job is to deal with that one.
“We have got two important games before the Celtic match.
“For that game to be what people want it to be then we have to go and win our games so we will just be concentrating on that first and foremost.”
