Hearts boss Derek McInnes says Adam Forrester will return to St Johnstone

Derek McInnes revealed Scotland Under-21 right-back Adam Forrester will return to St Johnstone after being temporarily recalled by Hearts.

The 20-year-old joined the Championship a month ago under the terms of the Scottish Football Association’s new co-operation loan system which allows Scottish-qualified players aged 21 or under to join a lower-league club, but be able to move between the parent and co-operation club throughout the season to increase playing time.

Forrester did not play a single game for the Perth club before Hearts swiftly opted to bring him back after learning summer signing Christian Borchgrevink had sustained a thigh injury.

However, after not featuring in any of Jambos’ three matches since his recall, the defender will now head back to the Championship leaders.

“Adam Forrester will go back to St Johnstone now,” manager McInnes told Hearts TV on Tuesday.

“We brought Adam back a couple of weeks ago, basically because we’d had a couple of inquiries about one or two of our defenders and we just decided to wait and let the window close before we made a decision on that.

“Christian Borchgrevink will hopefully be back in the next three to four weeks. And we do think that it would be fair for Adam to go out now, and Adam’s understanding of all that.”

McInnes revealed some of his fringe players – including young goalkeepers Liam MacFarlane and Harry Stone – could depart the club even though the window is closed.

“I think we’ve still got the option to maybe try and loan out a few players into the (Scottish) Championship,” he said. “There’s still a couple of windows open worldwide as well. Even though our window is closed in the UK. So we’ll look at that.

“Obviously, we’ve strengthened at goalkeeper and we’ve got quite a few to choose from there when everyone’s up to speed, so we’ll look at that opportunity as well.”