Brendan Rodgers today confirmed that Reo Hatate has suffered a hamstring injury which he described as a bad one and reckons that the Japanese midfielder will be missing for at least a couple of weeks. However that is likely to be extended once the injury has settled down and the club can make a more detailed assessment with probably six weeks being a reasonable estimate.
“There is not a definitive timeline but he will definitely be out for a few weeks,” the Celtic manager said today at his media conference ahead of tomorrow afternoon’s 3pm kick-off at Easter Road.
Brendan added: “We are just waiting on it to settle down and just waiting on the result and then we will see where he is at but it looked quite a bad one. If you watch the game then in the first 35 seconds he is overstretched and he has felt it very early on.
“It is such a shame for him. He was out with a hamstring injury last year and it is his other one this time so we just need to try and get to the bottom of that.”
Rodgers said that his squad would be ready for the game against Hibs after their midweek Champions League match against Atletico Madrid where it was clear that the Celtic players involved gave absolutely everything that they had against the Spanish side.
However with seven games in 21 days – tomorrow is the third in this intense spell of football matches – the Celtic manager will utilise his squad so other that the obvious replacement for Hatate, there could be one or two other changes to the starting line-up.
“I am very mindful but you have got to be very robust at that level but I think lots of these players are,” Brendan said. “You play last weekend and you played midweek and then you have another tough game at the weekend but that is about being a big club.
“Your body is trained for that and you have to prepare for that but there is no doubt over the next few games, as I said last week, we will be making some changes within that.”
Reo Hatate joins Liel Abada and Stephen Welsh on the injury list with all three hopefully back within the next month or so.
Here’s Brendan Rodgers’ media conference from earlier today.
