BRENDAN RODGERS held his press conference this afternoon ahead of the Scottish Cup tie with Airdrie on Saturday at Celtic Park.
First question was about the SFA’s Refereeing Summit that will be held in Perth later today. The Scottish FA’s Chief Executive Ian Maxwell with be joined by his Compliance Officer Clare Whyte and the Celtic manager confirmed that he’d be heading up to McDiarmid Park to hear what they have to say.
“I will be attending. It’s always good to communicate and we’ll hopefully have some positive action afterwards,” Brendan confirmed.
It is believed that ten of the twelve Scottish Premiership bosses will be in attendance including Gerrard from Ibrox and Derek McInnes from Aberdeen.
John Fleming is also attending to represent the referees and maybe he’ll explain the rules regarding kicking and grabbing opponents as they apply to the Ibrox side.
Celtic asked for a meeting with the Scottish FA in their recent statement. The club should follow up on this tomorrow and should note that the support is in no mood to just forget about it.
Brendan then gave an update on his new signings. He conformed that Oliver Burke and Timothy Weah are currently training with the rest of the squad at Lennoxtown and being introduced to their new Celtic team-mates over in Dubai.
“Oliver and Timothy joined us in Dubai and it’s been great for them to bond with the players on and off the pitch. It’s proved invaluable,” the Celtic manager stated.
And he also confirmed that Celtic are still waiting on the necessary work-permit being signed off for new striker Vakoun Issouf Bayo. As we told you earlier in the week Bayo will not feature against Airdrie on Saturday but he could still be introduced to the supporters either before the game or at half-time.
“Bayo is still going through his paperwork process, and will hopefully join us later in the week,” Brendan said.
“It’s great to have them on board, all three young talents with very big potential and it’ll be great to nurture that over the next six months.”
And if the Celtic manager is pleased with his activity so far in the transfer window he also confirmed that he is far from done and predicts that there will be new arrivals and players going out the door before the window ‘slams shut’ at the end of the month.
“There will be movement both ways, I would suggest, between now and the end of the window,” Brendan revealed.
“We’ve got a big squad. There will be players that naturally will want to go and play. We can hopefully do more business.”
Looking ahead to the Scottish Cup and Celtic’s chance to retain the trophy for a second successive season Rodgers recognises the difficulty of the task but wants to get off to a good start against Airdrie.
“We want to start with the defence of the trophy again, these games can be difficult off the back of a break but we’re looking forward to the game on Saturday and can hopefully get through to the next round,” he said.
The Celtic manager also confirmed that Kieran Tierney will be unavailable for the Airdrie game and accepted that the fans favourite will need to be given time to recover from his hip problem.
“He’s still unavailable. He’s working with the medical team with this issue, but he’s still injured at the moment. We’ll give him a bit of time and see how he’s doing,” Brendan said.
Pretty worrying, this Tierney situation….
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