“Daizen is okay, he just had a slight knock,” Brendan Rodgers

Brendan Rodgers yesterday gave a positive injury update on the Celtic squad with crucially no reports of any injuries picked up by the players away playing for their countries during the international break.

And he cleared up any concerns around Daizen Maeda’s fitness after he was forced to withdraw from the Japan squad after picking up a knock in the 3-1 win over Kilmarnock.

At yesterday’s media conference the Celtic manager was asked for a squad update ahead of the trip to Edinburgh to take on Hearts at Tynecastle – where there will be around 600 UNSOLD tickets in the home end after they cut Celtic’s allocation by a similar number!

Brendan replied: “Daizen is okay. He just had a slight knock after the Kilmarnock game. With it being friendlies there was communication between the two medical teams and he didn’t have to travel. He was able to have some treatment for a few days, but he was able to train for over a week now and he is absolutely fine.

“Maik (Nawrocki) is back in now and this is him 10 days or so into his training. He is getting sharper every day and he is finding his football fitness. So, that is really good news,” the Celtic manager revealed.

And there was also good news on Stephen Welsh who is now just a few weeks away from a return to full fitness and Liel Abada who is on schedule for a return in December.

With so many players available to the Celtic manager it makes his job even tougher deciding on who gets a start,  a place on the bench or left out of the match-day squad altogether and there will be players regularly finding themselves in this latter category who make be looking at a loan more or transfer come the January window.

Celtic’s expected starting eleven against Hearts tomorrow is Hart, Johnston, Carter-Vickers, Scales, Taylor; McGregor(c), O’Riley, Hatate; Maeda, Kyogo and Palma.