Paul Paton, the Dundee United midfielder, is in line for a recall for tonight's League Cup quarter-final tie against Hibernian just days after having been dropped from the squad.
The Northern Irishman was arrested in connection with an alleged attack on Lukasz Zaluska, the Celtic goalkeeper, in Glasgow's west end in the early hours of October 20. Mark Wilson, his Tannadice team-mate, also featured in a Dundee United investigation having been in the vicinity at the time of the incident.
Paton will appear at Glasgow Sheriff Court on November 27 as the Tayside club continues its own inquiry into the events of the night.
Both players were omitted from the squad for Saturday's game, which United lost 1-0 to Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the SPFL Premiership last weekend when Jackie McNamara's men missed out on the opportunity to go back to the top of the table.
Paton, who was at their St Andrews training base yesterday morning to prepare as normal for the Hibernian match, is in line to take his usual place in the Tannadice first team as they aim to restore some sense of normality and make it into the last four of the competition.
Simon Donnelly, the United assistant manager, confirmed full-back Wilson was also being considered for a place in the squad. "They have trained and will both be in consideration for the game tomorrow, as per usual," he said. "The inquiry is still ongoing, as far as I know. There's been no result as yet.
"It would be unfair not to consider them for selection for Wednesday. The weekend was a bit different.
"There had been a lot of media coverage and we thought it was the right thing to do, to take a wee bit of pressure off them.
"I think it was a relief to them to get back to training and focused on their job. That's what they do best."
United are aiming to make amends for their lacklustre 1-0 defeat in Inverness as the weekend and Donnelly believes tonight will be the ideal occasion to get back to wining ways.
"We had a disappointing result and performance at the weekend," he said. "This is a great game for us to come back to and hopefully get the right result. It's a big match for us.
"The good thing is that it's come round quickly after Saturday's performance."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article