MORTON manager Ray McKinnon has thanked Cardiff City for calling off the friendly between the two sides as his squad has been hit with a glut of injuries.

The Greenock outfit were due to host the Welsh side on Tuesday night, but with seven players now ruled out the game could have caused more problems for Morton as the league campaign draws closer.

Robert Thomson and Denny Johnstone are not expected back until next month, while Lewis Strapp has been ruled out for two months with a broken toe.

Chris Millar, Charlie Telfer, Gregor Buchanan and Kerr Waddell are all unlikely to feature in today’s Betfred Cup tie against Albion Rovers, with McKinnon revealing there’s a 95 per cent chance none of them will feature in the Cappielow clash this afternoon.

He told the Tele: “We’ve no players, so it wouldn’t be the right work out for Cardiff and it certainly wouldn’t be beneficial to us.

“We’ve got to put the club and the team first. As much as we’d all love to see Cardiff here it wouldn’t have been good for us as we would have been decimated.

“We can’t be risking any more injuries, and we made the decision to contact Cardiff and we told them about our situation and to be fair to them they’ve taken the hit to cancel the game which is really nice of them.

"We’re disappointed but Morton has to come first and we have a big game against Queen of the South, so we couldn’t take any chances.”