Heart of Midlothian are currently not looking at adding a right-back, Derek McInnes has revealed.
The club were dealt an injury blow over the weekend with news that Christian Borchgrevink could miss six to eight weeks with a thigh issue.
It has led Hearts to bring Adam Forrester back from his cooperation loan at St Johnstone without featuring for the Perth Saints.
McInnes explained that it is not as simple as simply going out and adding another right-back to a squad that sits at 31.
"I think there's this perception that we're spending millions and we can just go and sign another right back," McInnes said. "And we can't. We still need to get players out. We've still got to address the balance of the squad in terms of numbers.
"We've prioritised other positions. We've brought Christian Borchgrevink into the club. We've got young Adam Forrester on a cooperation loan for a reason. We've not loaned him out to pull some money back because we wanted the flexibility of that.
"It's not just a case of, he's injured, he's out of there, just get another one in. It's not as easy as that. We've spent well as a club. We've spent thousands, we're not spending millions, we're spending thousands, and we're identifying talent from lower leagues and players who are not at the top end of their game yet, at the top end of their careers yet.
"We're spending what we've got and we still need to address the budget. So, the answer to that, it's not an area we're looking at."
The positive news for Hearts is that the injury to Borchgrevink may not be as bad as first feared.
Forrester, who played in the bounce game on Tuesday, where Hearts defeated Ross County 8-1, becomes available for this weekend's Premier Sports Cup tie with St Mirren. He wasn't registered in time to face the Staggies for St Johnstone on Friday.
"So we've brought him back," McInnes said on Forrester. "I didn't want to be saying too much about it until I spoke with Adam face-to-face, which was yesterday. We talked it through and he's more than happy to be back, obviously delighted.
"St Johnstone know it's a free loan effectively and the reason we did it that way is so we have got the comfort of being able to bring him back.
"Christian, while the scan doesn't really read well, it's six to eight weeks, we don't feel it's maybe quite as bad as that, just in how he's presenting. So it's important we try and treat the symptoms rather than the scan results. So hopefully it'll be a bit sooner than that.
"And the club brought Christian to the club to be the guy to play right-back and right wing-back.
"But we also feel it's incumbent on us to look after Adam and other young Hearts players to keep up their minutes because the evidence shows that if young boys aren't playing football then they're not going to reach their maximum level.
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"We want the likes of Macaulay [Tait] and Lewis Neilson, and certainly for Adam, to get those minutes in. I think it's important that we do that.
"But he's back, he's played yesterday, did great in the game and he's back to be available and see if he can get his place in the team."
The other current option at right-back is Michael Steinwender. The Austrian centre-back has featured at full-back in the first two games of the season, where he hasn't looked out of place.
"He's happy to do it because the thing he's got is he's really mobile, really quick, really comfortable in wide areas," McInnes explained.
"When he plays as an outside centre back anyway, nobody's going to run him in that channel. He's comfortable and he's got really good mobility to do that.
"It's not perfect in that sense. I'm blessed with really good centre-backs here. We've inherited some brilliant centre-backs and we've added Stu [Findlay] to that."
