John Kennedy spoke to the Mainstream Media this morning, perhaps a little earlier in the day that is usual the case, to allow for the pre-match interviews to get out there before the weekend long, football wide, social media boycott began.
The Interim Celtic manager dismissed as ‘Made Up’ the nonsense that he’s in the frame to be the Director of Football. “It’s been made up,” Kennedy stated and he reckons it’s simply a matter of someone guessing what’s going on. On his own position, he reckons he’ll have to sit down in a few weeks to see what if anything is on offer at Celtic and then decide if that’s what he wants to do.
On the injury front, Kennedy confirmed as we told you earlier that James Forrest is fully fit and available for the weekend, adding that he’ll be fine for Scotland’s Euro campaign of Steve Clarke is looking for an update. Mikey Johnston is also back in training and is available for selection on Sunday for the trip to Ibrox.
The watered down Invincible claim from theRangers can be used as a slight motivation but mostly it’s about Celtic being better in both boxes and that will Kennedy believe make all the difference in terms of the result going Celtic’s way against the new club, formed in 2012 by Charles Green. Kennedy reckons that his side need to be more clinical and and ruthless in the big moments in these matches, with that really being the main difference this season and where theRangers have been better than Celtic.
Kennedy was asked about theRangers getting knocked out of the Scottish Cup last weekend and whether that helps to demonstrate what an incredible achievement Celtic’s Quadruple Treble really was, and he accepted that it probably has been under appreciated but in time the scale of the achievement will indeed be recognised as no club will ever be able to do it again.
The Leigh Griffiths contract extension is NOT been sorted today as initially reported but will be sorted out one way or another over the next two weeks. Kennedy admits that he is NOT involved in these decisions as his focus is simply taking the team, handling training and preparing for the games.
Griffiths, Edouard and Ajeti all training well this week and are available to Sunday, Kennedy said.
The chance to send Scott Brown off with one last win in Celtic colours against an Ibrox club is indeed another motivation for the players and a number of others could also be playing in their last Glasgow Derby.
