Celtic are back at Celtic Park today after three consecutive away matches against Aberdeen and Hibs in the Scottish Premiership and St Mirren in the Scottish Cup. Today’s opponents Kilmarnock come to Paradise looking for a third win in a season over Celtic, surely that’s never happened before?
Derek McInnes’ side is in good form and look to have secured their top six spot, leaving the likes of Aberdeen, Motherwell and Hibs trailing the Rugby Park side, who like Dundee are the over-performing sides in this season’s Scottish Premiership.
Celtic have lost just one of our last 82 home matches against Kilmarnock in all competitions, securing 64 wins with 17 draws. Celtic are also unbeaten in the last 17 games against Kilmarnock at Celtic Park since a 2-0 defeat in October 2012. In those 17 games Celtic have won 14 and drawn three.
Kilmarnock have lost just one of their last six away matches in the league, and they managed to keep a clean sheet in four of these away games, so they will provide a significant obstacle to Celtic’s title aspirations today. A top performance will be needed from Brendan Rodgers’ side to take the three points.
Brendan Rodgers yesterday asked the Celtic support for patience and pointed out that it could take a while to break down a stubborn Kilmarnock defence while the Celtic support are mindful that our top of the table status is only going to be maintained by outscoring theRangers who play away at McDiarmid Park against St Johnstone tomorrow lunchtime.
Celtic Team News
Greg Taylor returns and is likely to start at left back with understudy Alexandro Bernabei dropping to the bench. Alistair Johnston remains sidelined so Anthony Ralston will continue at right back. Cameron Carter-Vickers remains sidelined but has resumed training and will be back in a fortnight’s time probably. Liel Abada is not in the squad as we have reported on extensively and it looks like he has in fact played his last game for Celtic. A real shame as he has been a popular and effective performer for Celtic. Whatever happens we wish Liel all the very best.
Predicted Team
Joe Hart, who has been outstanding over the past three away matches, will have the gloves as usual. The two full-backs will be Ralston and Taylor and the central defensive pairing of Stephen Welsh and Liam Scales is set to continue after they performed so well at Paisley in what was a challenging match.
In the middle of the park, using Brendan’s new 4-4-1-1 formation we can expect the same again from Paisley with Daizen Maeda on the right, Luis Palma on the left and the central pairing of the Celtic captain Callum McGregor and Matt O’Riley.
Ahead of them Kyogo will start and play just behind target-man Adam Idah.
So we reckon Celtic will line-up as follows:
Hart; Ralston, Welsh, Scales, Taylor; Maeda, McGregor (c), O’Riley, Palma; Kyogo and Idah
On the bench for Celtic: Bain, Nawrocki, Bernabei, Tomoki, Holm, Bernardo, Kuhn, Yang and Oh
Match Officials
John Beaton will be the referee this afternoon and he will be assisted by Calum Spence and David Dunne. The Fourth Official will be Peter Stuart and Willie Collum will be on VAR duties and will be assisted by Dougie Potter.
Kick-off Time
It’s a good old fashioned 3pm on a Saturday afternoon kick-off today for the Celtic v Kilmarnock match at Celtic Park.
Where to Watch
The game will be shown live on Celtic TV for subscribers based outside of Britain and Ireland. Match highlights will be broadcast on Sportscene on BBC Scotland later this evening at 7.30pm and repeated on BBC One Scotland at 11.55pm.
Predicted Score
After a few near misses, we got last weekend’s score right, saying Celtic would win 2-0 at St Mirren. Today we’ll go one further and predict a 3-0 win for the Hoops.
COYBIG
Liel Abada is not in the squad it looks like he has in fact played his last game for Celtic. Really based on what ? your opinion ? do you work for the Daily Record ? you should with pish like that .