Feyenoord have a major striking issue for their clash against Celtic next week.
On Tuesday evening, the Scottish and Dutch champions will get their Champions League campaigns up and running with a tasty meeting in Rotterdam.
As we are all too aware, Celtic don’t have their injury troubles to seek for the match. First-choice centre-backs Cameron Carter-Vickers and Maik Nawrocki are both out, as is Liel Abada. However, our opponents have issues of their own to contend with.
As we covered earlier in the week, their forward Ayase Ueda picked up an injury while on international duty with Japan. The news actually benefitted Kyogo Furuhashi who started his country’s second game as a result.
Ueda is ruled out of the match against us next week. So is leading Feyenoord forward Santiago Giménez, after he picked up a two-match ban for a red card in the Europa League last season.
Giménez’s suspension was a big reason for the Eredivisie side splashing out so much money on Ueda in the summer. The fact that he is now missing gives them a bit of an issue, and it’s not one manager Arne Slot is shying away from.
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“Of course, you are extra disappointed with Ueda,” he told Dutch outlet VI.
“Not so much for the weekend, but one of the reasons for spending so much money was to cover Santiago Giménez’s suspension in the Champions League. It’s a shame that Ueda can’t play.
“The options for how we are going to solve this are not exactly numerous. Until now it didn’t really matter who was in the striker, he would still hit the balls. We have to take care of that again.
“Igor [Paixão] could do that. He did very well in a practice match against PEC Zwolle. But he and Yankuba Minteh didn’t do that very well against Hoffenheim.”
So Feyenoord have an issue up front and their manager doesn’t exactly sound too enthused about the players that could fix it. They will find someone to play the role, but he is likely to be their third or fourth choice. That can only be good news for us.
It’s actually a really good opening fixture for the team. It will be a really tough challenge and the hosts will probably be viewed as favourites. But we see it as more of a 50/50 clash.
Feyenoord are the kind of team we should be looking to get the better of in group-stage football. If they have injury concerns then that only boosts our chances.
In other news, Celtic have released information for the game including fan meeting, alcohol and holdback details