Celtic fielded a strong defence for tonight’s Cammy Kerr Testimonial against Dundee at Dens Park.
Scott Bain, Stephen Welsh, Yuki Kobayashi, Gustaf Lagerbielke and Alexandro Bernabei all featured for the Bhoys Select side, which was managed by Darren O’Dea and Stephen McManus rather than Brendan Rodgers. The rest of the eleven and the substitutes were made up from the B team’s youth ranks.
However, there was one veteran on the bench. Former goalkeeper Rab Douglas – who starred for both Dundee and the Bhoys – was a Celtic substitute for the night as the Tayside club rolled back the years with several big names in town for the clash.
Julian Speroni, Fabian Caballero, Juan Sara, Gary Harkins and O’Dea himself all featured for the Dees amongst others to celebrate Kerr’s long career at Dens. The ‘legends’ portion of the game took place from the 70th minute onwards, with the scores locked at 0-0.
The match finished 1-0 after a tokenistic 90th-minute penalty taken by Kerr which Rab Douglas made clear he wouldn’t be contesting in goals.
Important minutes for Celtic fringe players
Given the size of Rodgers’ first-team squad, it has been quite difficult to get minutes for a lot of players within the group.
Tonight’s match was hardly a big test, especially with a novelty factor in the second half, but they will be important moments for the likes of Welsh, Bernabei and Lagerbielke nonetheless.
They need to find a way to make a push into Rodgers’ plans and conducting themselves with professionalism and building fitness tonight is a part of that.
All of them will be hoping for more substantial Celtic contributions in a busy month of fixtures after the international break.
In other news, Celtic forward Hyeongyu Oh makes positive noises in South Korean media.
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