Bayer Leverkusen have this afternoon confirmed their squad to face Celtic in the Europa League tomorrow night.
The Bundesliga heavyweights have confirmed on Twitter that they’ll only be missing 4 players for the game. These include the suspended Karim Demirby along with the injured Mitchell Bakker, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, and Julian Baumgartlinger respectively.
Leverkusen have stated that the rest of their first-team squad is fit and available to feature. That comes as a major surprise considering it looked as though they were set for a handful of extra absentees as recently as the weekend.
Star striker Patrick Schick has only just returned to training after injury. Karim Bellarabi, Charles Aranguiz, and Lucas Alario also looked set to miss out with knocks.
However, in a big turnaround for Leverkusen, all of them appear to be fit judging by the latest update. Whether manager Gerardo Seoane decides to play any of them remains to be seen. But it’s a major squad boost for the Germans regardless, who looked set to be a lot more threadbare.
Celtic, meanwhile, have no fresh injury concerns from the weekend win over St Johnstone.
Bayer Leverkusen announcement a big boost for their supporters ahead of Celtic crunch
The Leverkusen supporters are likely going to be left buzzing with this. All of a sudden their options in the final third appear to have been bolstered emphatically.
With a bit of luck, Schick, Aranguiz, and Alario in particular are still some time away. But given Leverkusen are deeming them fit and available, you have to take it at face value.
Even so, Celtic will feel they still managed to put up a strong fight even with the above fit and available at Parkhead back in September. On another night, we very well could’ve had a better result had we taken our chances.
Leverkusen still have the likes of Florian Wirtz, Amine Adli, and Moussa Diaby available in any case. They still boast plenty of top-level talent even if they were missing the above players.
It just goes to show the strength in depth they truly have when their star players are all available. It’s absolutely scary to think how much their squad could truly be worth. But that makes the challenge all the more exciting tomorrow night, and Celtic still have every reason to feel confident ahead of it.
Hopefully we do ourselves some justice. We certainly have the talent to make our mark.
In other news, Celtic supporters left baffled with laughable moment from Ange Postecoglou’s presser
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