IT wasn’t the best of days for Celtic yesterday. The angst started when news broke of the apparent £25million bid that Everton are considering making for Kieran Tierney. Someone must have told them that the 50% off items at the Celtic superstore extended to the playing squad too.
Then Brendan Rodgers sent out two Celtic teams to try to score a goal against Bohemians and neither one could manage it. The Czech’s did get one, rather fortunately it has to be said, but that was enough to give them a Celtic scalp.
⚽GÓL | Dominik Mašek poslal Klokany do vedení ve 35. minutě! Bohemians – Celtic 1:0 #BOHCEL pic.twitter.com/a6kSx5tibl
— Bohemians Praha 1905 (@bohemians1905) June 30, 2018
The score doesn’t really matter, we can lie to ourselves, this morning. However if it was that unimportant how come most of us watched that kick about rather than the engrossing, thrilling France v Argentina round of 16 match at the World Cup?
Of more concern that the defeat in Austria was the injury scare suffered by Jonny Hayes, who is just back playing again after breaking his leg at Dens Park on Boxing Day last year.
Brendan Rodgers provided an update on this latest injury scare for the former Aberdeen man after the game.
“Jonny’s thigh is a bit tight and we’ll just have to see how he is.
“It’s a shame for him as he started the game quite well combining with Scott Sinclair down the left.
“Hopefully, we have just been a wee bit cautious but he felt his thigh when he had the shot that just went wide.
“Unfortunately, it can happen when a player comes back after a long time out.
“Jonny is very dynamic but hopefully it was just a twinge and it will be nothing too serious.”
Brendan also did his best to play down the defeat, you get the feeling he doesn’t really like losing at anything so a 1-0 loss to Bohemians Prague would annoy him more in private than he showed yesterday.
“The scoreline is irrelevant in terms of our main objective. Fitness-wise it was good. We had a game on Wednesday and double sessions on Thursday and Friday.
“That is why we looked a wee bit leggy. I thought we started the game brightly, got in some good positions and we made a mistake for the goal.
“It will happen at this stage in the season. It was a good 90 minutes for both teams in very difficult conditions.”
Next up for the Celtic squad is not one but two games on Tuesday.
There will be a closed-doors match against BW Linz followed by another pre-season “friendly” against Sparta Prague – seem to remember them being dirty bassas the last time around.
“We’re trying to edge guys towards 90 minutes now. There’s no rest, you must keep pushing them.”
