Spoilt for choice in an attacking sense, it will be interesting to see tonight’s starting XI selected by Martin O’Neill and Shaun Maloney…
Tonight we head to Pittodrie in yet another vital league fixture, even more so after Hearts slipped to a 1-0 defeat against St Mirren last night, meaning a win against the Dons will cut the gap with the league leaders to just three points.
Celtic needed a favour as we were six points behind Hearts with one only match against them to play and that will be at Celtic Park post-split. That favour was duly delivered by St Mirren’s Miguel Freckleton at Paisley last night with his 88th minute header. Nice to see Hearts conceding from a corner too.
So the title is back in our own hands and the work starts tonight up at Pittodrie against an manageress Aberdeen who are on a run of terrible results. We have to prolong their agony.
Tonight Celtic supporters will be both eager and curious to see the starting XI selected by MON and Shaun, due to the influx of new players arriving through the door on deadline day. In the once problematic centre forward department, it’s now an area where we are spoiled for choice with the likes of Tomas Cvancara, Junior Adamu, and of course Kelechi Iheanacho all available for selection.
Fellow new boy Joel Mvuka will also be in contention for a start to give us a stack of options up top against the Dons as the title battle intensifies.
With Sebastian Tounekti, Daizen Maeda and Yang also most likely to be available we have an abundance of attacking options, and will be more of a threat in front of goal, more so than the last few weeks. And don’t forget James Forrest who performed very well indeed in the second half at the weekend in the 2-0 win over Falkirk.
Winning is the only prerogative, but goal differential could well come into play come the end of the season. So it goes without saying that adding a few to our goals for tally would be ideal, and with an added freshness and depth in our squad, three points and lots of goals is what we all expect and demand in every single fixture from now on in.
Tomas Cvancara, Sebastian Tounekti, and Daizen Maeda are perhaps the most likely candidates to start, but with the likes of Iheanacho, Adamu, Mvuka, Yang and Forrest likely to be on the bench, we have fantastic options to choose from if we need to freshen things up.
Aberdeen in their own pen is always a tough gig, but we’re on the cusp of seven game unbeaten run, and with a host of new faces in the squad, we can head to Pittodrie in fine spirits and dim their Norther Lights even more to make Celtic’s title challenge shine brightly.
Oh and cheer up Derek.
Just an Ordinary Bhoy
Trusty coming in for Murray is the only change I’m expecting from the weekend?
The potential big difference for ourselves, is that we should have a bench available, to be able to make an impact within games?
That element has been badly missing this season, especially with the 5 sub rule in operation.
Also think that to many of our players had become to comfortable in getting selected, regardless of how they were preforming imo?
Hopefully that isn’t the case now for the remainder of this season either?
But it also has to be noted that 5 additions doesn’t fit into the 3 changes allowed within the europa league squad also.
That alone brings competition to who those 3 will be, to potentially replace CCV, Kenny and balikwisha from our original squad named imo?