Ange Postecoglou addresses whether injured Celtic stars will return vs St Johnstone

By David Walton

December 23, 2021

Ange Postecoglou last night provided an update on the Celtic injury crisis ahead of the Boxing Day clash against St Johnstone.

The Hoops were again without a host of their top stars as injuries finally caught up with them against St Mirren. Indeed, a dour 0-0 draw sees Postecoglou’s side slip to 6 points behind Rangers in a massively disappointing night for the club.

Celtic were left rattled with the likes of Joe Hart and Kyogo Furuhashi joining the unavailable list last night. However, Postecoglou stated post-match that a couple are fighting to return to the fold for the game at McDiarmid Park without being overly committal.

Speaking in an interview with the BBC post-match, Postecoglou said: “I’m not sure. We’ll see. It’s unlikely that anyone will definitely come back into it.

“A couple might be close, but again we’ll see over the next couple of days how they recover from what they’ve got.”

Celtic will enter the winter break after the weekend’s matches, giving their players 3 weeks of recuperation time before the league starts up again.

Celtic can’t go on like this much longer

Celtic’s fixture list has been hectic over the last several weeks, but it’s also been rather kind with regards to the difficulty of the opposition.

A home game against Motherwell was followed by trips to Ross County and St Mirren. The hard-hitting truth is that title-challengers take 9 points from those games. We could easily have come up against more grueling opposition with such a depleted squad.

On Sunday, it’s just about squeezing through the game against the Saints. Celtic can’t afford to be thinking about the winter break too early. Any more dropped points would turn the deficit into a 3-game swing and that needs to be avoided at all cost.

As for who could be fighting for a return, you have to imagine that Hart and Kyogo are at the top of the list. Both of their omissions last night came as a slight surprise. Truth be told it’s ultimately what led to us dropping points too – particularly the latter’s absence.

With only one game before the break, you would hope Ange would risk some of the stars who are touch and go. They’ll have 3 weeks off of fixtures after the Saints game, and that will help Celtic massively. That’s whilst not even taking into account the new recruits which should be darting through the door come the beginning of January.

We’ll see what happens in the coming days and whether the line-up looks any stronger against St Johnstone. One thing’s for sure, no more slip-ups are allowed.

In other news, “I don’t rest players”; Celtic boss clears up Joe Hart confusion in BBC interview