Ange Postecoglou was looking for ‘energy’ in his Celtic team today after a gruelling 90 minutes away to Hearts at Tynecastle on Wednesday night.
The Bhoys boss made three changes to his starting eleven against Dundee United today, bringing Liel Abada, Liam Scales and Anthony Ralston into the fold at the expense of Jota, Greg Taylor and Josip Juranovic.
Leaving Jota out was an especially curious decision given his impact last time out, but most will assume that the manager has one eye on the upcoming derby against Rangers.
Postecoglou wouldn’t say that publicly of course and gave a simpler reason for making the changes to BBC Radio Scotland pre-match, stating: “I’ve always been comfortable making changes. We’re still not where we want to be in terms of depth – we’ve got quite a lot of players missing.
“We know what the schedule is like from here on. It’s just going to get more and more demanding. It’s important through this time we try and expose as many of our players to this level of football so that we can call upon them because we’re going to need them.
“The three lads I’ve brought in today are full of energy and full of running – we’re going to need that today after a difficult night against Hearts midweek. I believe they’ll bring the energy we need.”
The performance against United so far has certainly been energetic. There’s a high tempo to the match today from both sides and you can already spot signs of tiredness in the away side.
All three players have been heavily involved in Celtic’s attacking play, especially Abada as you’d expect. So far we just haven’t been able to produce that moment of genius to get ahead.
If we can get Jota on the pitch in the second half, at the expense of James Forrest or the Israeli winger, we should be even more dangerous.
In other news, Celtic coach bigs up youth player who is training ‘particularly well’ and learning from Kyogo.
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