Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers must play our strongest side against St Johnstone. Sunday showed he can’t afford not to…
Early on Saturday evening will see us up in Perth to take on St Johnstone on Scottish Premiership duties as we aim to pick up another three points and keep up our one hundred percent start to the campaign going. One eye will however be on the small matter of a trip to the Westfalenstadion to take on Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday night.
There’s been chatter on The Celtic Star and elsewhere of resting a few players with that game in mind, but for me that is a complete non starter. St Johnstone will prove to be another difficult opponent despite their struggling start to the campaign. Especially since they kicked that old footballing dinosaur that is Craig Levein into the long grass, that’s where he’s happiest.
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Sunday’s Premier Sports cup tie at home to Falkirk also showed us that we perhaps aren’t as strong as we were lead to believe, so for me we must use our strongest available starting XI if we want to be victorious against the Perth Saints.
On paper the Celtic team that started on Sunday was strong but games aren’t played or won on paper and instead we have players making debuts, players getting their first action on the the season and off-form players expected to show significant improvement. It took the introduction of the likes of Arne Engels, Greg Taylor and most importantly Nicolas Kuhn to turn the game around for Celtic and earn us a mouth-watering semi-final against Aberdeen at Hampden at the start of November.
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Yes, there could be a risk of injury to our more ‘important’ players, but that is a risk you take in every game you play, so we will just have to hope and pray we avoid any injuries to our squad. Brendan can look to get the game won in the first hour then take off his ‘big guns’, a reverse situation to the match against Falkirk where the Celtic manager admitted that he had made too many changes.
The Dortmund game is incredibly important, but the St Johnstone game is just as equally important so we have to play our strongest side and hopefully come through unscathed ready to travel to Germany to take on the might of Dortmund.
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It was smart of the Bundesliga to give Dortmund a Friday night fixture to assist them ahead of taking on the finest team in Scotland. One day we might have smarter folk running our own league. Instead they give Celtic an evening kick-off slot to suit their pals at Premier Sport. It’s astonishing really.
Just an Ordinary Bhoy
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It’s why Rodgers gets paid the big money to be making the big decisions involved for the best of our club?
Agreed that we want to be able to field our strongest team available in every match possible?
Yet, how much energy levels within the team could be reduced, with the high tempo and intensity with the pressing that we are currently enjoying, and successful at present for Tuesday against dortmund?
We can tend to think our players are robotic and should be able to produce every time they take to the field?
That are the demands that are still expected, even with the reduced recovery time involved?
Would even settle for a boring, side to side slow controlling 1-0 victory on Saturday, with what’s at stake on Tuesday myself?
But in return it would raise red flags for many within our support also?
Don’t think Rodgers would really want to be sending our team to play in such a manner, especially with a far bigger test in dortmund, three days later?
Glad Rodgers has to be making the decisions upon the dilemma that we are currently going to have to overcome?
Having Celtic play on a Saturday night before a Euro tie on the Tuesday,reeks of free masonry/ orange order SFA guidance! Yes the SFA want the plaudits from a Scottish team, but do nothing too help Celtic, which for them is par for the course,and of course if Celtic loose, the beaks will be the first too condemn them. Yes right out of the free mason / orange rule of keeping Celtic down, but they won’t! Hail Hail
That’s the great thing Brendan is installing in this squad – It won’t matter when they try to hinder us the players will rise above it all…
HH