Watch Kazakhstan vs Scotland live on Sky Sports Football from 2.30pm on Thursday
Thursday 21 March 2019 20:18, UK
Kieran Tierney will miss Scotland's European Qualifier away to Kazakhstan on Thursday due to injury.
Callum McGregor will captain Alex McLeish's side for the game in Nursultan, with Andrew Robertson also missing.
Celtic's Tierney was set to deputise for Robertson, but will now miss Thursday's match due to an apparent hip problem, the Scottish Football Association has announced.
Tierney played through a niggle during Celtic's win over Dundee on Sunday. The 21-year-old sat out training in an indoor arena on Tuesday, undergoing some work on his own back at the team hotel, but has failed to recover in time.
"Keiran had to pull out of this game. We did a medical on him and a scan, he can't be risked at this stage," manager Alex McLeish said in his Thursday press conference.
"These are things you can't control. We have great faith in our medical team and we won't take a risk with any of the club's players.
"We don't know if Keiran will be okay for the San Marino game. First things first we will focus on this game and we believe the players we have at our disposal are good enough."
McLeish believes McGregor is a natural choice to step in as captain and is confident the rest of the squad will react well to the appointment.
"I think over a period of time in the last few years, Callum has shown tremendous ability on the field but also he is a very good ambassador on and off the pitch," he said.
"An unfussy player, nothing seems to bother him. He is a great example to the rest of the squad and I believe the players will respond to him being skipper."
With both his usual left-back options unavailable, McLeish hinted Aberdeen's Graeme Shinnie is likely to fill that role on Thursday.
"We are pretty well covered in the positions," he said.
"It is disappointing to lose our captain Andy Robertson and Keiran as well, it's really bad luck because they are both fantastic players.
"But we are lucky to have a player of Graeme Shinnie's quality who can slot into a number of different positions. I don't want to give you my team in the moment in time but he is certainly a candidate."
McLeish insisted his side will employ a cautious approach to game on Thursday as Scotland begin their campaign to qualify for Euro 2020.
He said: "When you say go all out, I think people use that phrase and it sounds as if you play expansive football and don't ever care about defending.
"We know it's an extremely important game and we use those two words quite a lot. If we play to the level of our last two games - yes we have players missing - it is important we don't lose too many of the players who won those games. Those gave us a sense of a strong mentality.
"Now we have to plan it in a certain way. We will try to attack but also strive to be very good in defence."
