Martin O’Neill has named his starting XI and bench for the vital match at Rugby Park this afternoon against Kilmarnock in the 2pm Scottish Premiership kick-off. The match is first up on Sky Sports in a double header for Scottish football with theRangers v Hearts match from Ibrox following.
As expected Celtic’s record signing Arne Engels is missing after suffering a thigh injury in the 2-1 win over Livingston in midweek.
The midfield three are Celtic captain Callum MCGregor, Benjamin Nygren and rather surprisingly Reo Hatate, but perhaps we can see the brilliant man management skills of Martin O’Neill in action via a vastly improved performance from the talented but inconsistent Japanese playmaker.
Up top Junior Adamu is through the middle with Yang, who was rested on Wednesday night, returning to the right wing with Daizen Maeda wide on the left.
Kasper Schmeichel keeps the gloves and the back four are Julian Araujo, Auston Trusty, Liam Scales and Kieran Tierney.
On the Celtic bench this afternoon we have Sinisalo, Cvancara, McCowan, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Tounekti, Saracchi, Murray, Forrest and Donovan.
Meanwhile Neil McCann has made two changes from their 4-3 win over St Mirren, with Dominic Thompson returning in place of Liam Polworth, and Joe Hughil makes his first start with Bruce Anderson dropping to the bench.
The Kilmarnock team news is as follows:
Kilmarnock XI: Roos, Schjonning-Larsen, Brown, Deas, Thompson, Lyons, Watson, Kiltie, Curtis, John-Jules, Hugill
Kilmarnock Subs: Stryjek, McKenzie, Thomson, Brandon, Dackers, Polworth, Williams, Anderson and Tshibola.
Kick-off is at 2pm, the game is live on Sky Sports Football.
Come on You Bhoys in Green!
📋 Team news from Kilmarnock#KILCEL | #CelticFC🍀 pic.twitter.com/IXTSItk6yF
— Celtic Football Club (@CelticFC) February 15, 2026
Last chance to grab your copy of Invincible, signed by Matt Corr
Last remaining copies of Matt Corr’s brilliant debut book ‘Invincible’ are now being sold on our bookstore or just £10 plus postage. And please note we only charge postage on the first book in our order so you can order others for just a tenner each postage free. Invincible is a brilliant read covering that awesome season that ended in spectacular fashion at Hampden in the Scottish Cup final….
Stocks are very low on Invincible so if you want it in your Celtic book collection today would be a good time to order! Visit celticstarbooks.com to get your copy of INVINCIBLE.
Introducing The Celtic Star App and our new ad-free Premium Service...
Go ad-free on The Celtic Star, get a FREE trial period to try it out. Also download our new App – available for both Apple and Android – and get the best Celtic content on your phone without fighting through pop-up ads and being forced to watch videos.
Our new PREMIUM service comes with a free seven-day trial so you can look before you book. If you are happy to continue the price will be just 99p per month or £9.99 for the year. For that you get an AD-FREE SITE plus access to our premium content, and you’ll also help us make The Celtic Star even better and less reliant on advertising revenues, allowing us to be more focused on publishing the best Celtic features on the internet.
Click HERE to access your FREE trial. We think you’ll like it! We’re Obsessed with Celtic and we think you are too! Join us hand in hand...
Think we are looking at potentially the same starting line-up today, with the stuttagrt game in mind imo?
2 vastly different circumstances involved, but hopefully we can start forming a higher level of consistency within both our selection and team play.
Got a bench now, that could change the course of the game if required at last.
Utter sh*the from Celtic first half.
Maeda, Hatate, Adamu and McGregor were non existent as usual.
Martin you need to wake up to these imposters.