Brendan Rodgers has explained how he will use his Celtic squad for the upcoming Gamba Osaka clash.
The Hoops are in Japan where they went down 6-4 to Yokohama F. Marinos on Wednesday. They will now travel west to Osaka ahead of Saturday’s match.
Rodgers has been speaking to Celtic TV in the aftermath of the loss, and touching on why the midweek clash will be different from the weekend.
“We wanted to really push a number of players tonight,” the Hoops boss said.
“You could see by the time they were coming off, 65 minutes, [there was] tiredness in their legs. But we needed to get them through that.
“Come the weekend we’ll probably go back to more having two 45 minutes because of the heat and everything else.
“That will allow us to get back in a good place physically after this trip, then over the following weeks we can really ramp it up.”
So in Rodgers’ words, today’s game was about pushing the players pretty close to their limits. With that considered, it’s perhaps no surprise that there was such a drop off in the second half.
On Saturday we will likely see two completely different teams playing each half. That seems to have been what happened in our earlier Portugal fixtures, although details are a little sketchy.
After Gamba Osaka we face Wolves in Dublin and then Athletic Club at home. You could argue that the standard of opposition is increasing with every passing match.
Hopefully the pre-season planning pays off when the real action starts on August 5.
In other news, the Celtic support in Yokohama made plenty of noise despite the defeat
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