By Andrew Dickson

LEE McCULLOCH hopes to play against Dundee United on Saturday and put himself in contention for a UEFA Cup final slot.

The former Wigan midfielder resumed training after an ankle injury this week and Walter Smith had hoped to use him against the Arabs at some point.

Having suffered no adverse reaction, the 29-year-old remains on course to feature against Craig Levein's men, most likely as a substitute.

Doing so would then give him a chance of turning out against Zenit St Petersburg at the City of Manchester Stadium on Wednesday night.

McCulloch said: "I trained today and I feel all right so hopefully I'll be able to play some part in the game at the weekend.

"It will be up to the manager to pick me as I think I'll be fit which is great because two weeks ago, I thought my season was over.

"Now I've got a wee bit of hope to cling on to and getting a run-out on Saturday would be brilliant from a personal point of view.

"I've trained for three days now and I'm feeling good although to be honest, playing any part of the season at all would be good.

"Initially, I was told my foot was broken but then when the swelling went down after a couple of days, I had a scan and it turned out the bone was only bruised."

Getting McCulloch back is a further boost for Walter Smith, whose squad has been somewhat depleted in recent weeks because a number of players have had knocks.

After Charlie Adam came back in the closing stages of yesterday's 1-0 win over Motherwell, the manager is pleased to have more options opening up to him.

Smith added: "We have a couple of players who have been out for a while, including DaMarcus Beasley, Charlie and Lee.

"The last two are just coming back and we will have to keep assessing their fitness, although Charlie played a bit of the game yesterday.

"Lee will hopefully play a part of the game on Saturday and that would leave us free to select him, if necessary, on Wednesday.

"He had always hoped to be back before the end of the season and even if that was in the last week, there would still be four games to play."