Hearts have had no approaches to take Craig Gordon on loan and the Scotland goalkeeper is “too important” for the Scottish Premiership leaders in any case, head coach Derek McInnes has revealed.

The 43-year-old has yet to play for the Edinburgh club this season after Alexander Schwolow cemented his place following the German’s arrival from Union Berlin while Gordon was injured.

Gordon regained his Scotland place in recent World Cup qualifiers against Belarus and Denmark and will be keen for club playing time before this summer’s tournament in North America.

But McInnes insisted “nobody’s asked” about his availability.

“Craig’s too important for us,” he said. “We’re fortunate we’ve got good goalkeepers here.

“If we want to do what we want to do this season, we want to have the strongest squad possible. I’m just glad he’s fit and available and there to be called upon if we need him, because you just never know when that will be the case.”

Meanwhile, McInnes had an update on the expected arrival of new signing Islam Chesnokov following the end of the Kazakhstan winger’s contract with Tobol in his homeland.

“He is due in just after Christmas in the intention to bed him in for training,” he said. “And hopefully the paperwork goes accordingly that we can get him available for Livingston [3 January].

“There’s no guarantees with that, because we don’t control that, but we’re trying to tick all the boxes and jump through all the right hoops to get that to the stage.”