Celtic are back into the domestic action on Saturday with a testing trip to Livingston.
While European progress, or a lack of it, has dominated headlines over the past few days, the Premiership return offers the Celtic first-team a chance to get back to winning ways.
Our league form so far this season has been pretty good. We’ve taken 13 points from our first possible 15 and won at Ibrox and Pittodrie — perhaps the two toughest grounds we visit domestically.
Livingston‘s Tony Macaroni Arena would be up there too. We can’t afford to be off our game against David Martindale’s side.
With that in mind, and plenty to take away from the midweek Feyenoord loss, what team will Brendan Rodgers go with for the lunchtime kick-off?
Let’s take a look at what we expect to see.
Joe Hart will continue between the sticks, with Alistair Johnston and Greg Taylor very likely to feature in the full-back positions.
At centre-back, we may well see Gustaf Lagerbielke and Liam Scales play together again. As we covered in our team news piece on Friday, Nat Phillips is a doubt for the match after rolling his ankle in his debut against Dundee last week.
Even if Phillips is fit, it doesn’t make much sense to risk him on the artificial surface. Anyway, Lagerbielke is a bit of a plastic pitch specialist. His former side Elfsborg’s Borås Arena pitch is artificial. He’ll have played on these kinds of surfaces more than any other Celtic player and should be very well-equipped.
In midfield, we think we may see an unchanged line-up from midweek. Callum McGregor will play, Reo Hatate needs minutes and Matt O’Riley has been one of our better performers in recent weeks. The former two were far from their best in midweek so we need to see a better showing.
Up front, we think we will see a change. Daizen Maeda has been vital in recent wins away to Livi and it would be good to see him back on his favoured left. That may open up an opportunity for Hyunjun Yang on the right. It would be his first start away from home for Celtic and a big opportunity for the fringe star to show what he can do.
Kyogo Furuhashi will be the main man through the middle, looking to add to his tally against Livingston.
The likes of Hyeongyu Oh, Luis Palma, David Turnbull and Paulo Bernardo could all impact the game from the bench.
Your Predicted XI in full: Hart, Johnston, Lagerbielke, Scales, Taylor, McGregor, O’Riley, Hatate, Yang, Maeda, Kyogo.
In other news, Greg Taylor’s role at Celtic hasn’t changed as much as you may think
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