Brendan Rodgers was keen to point out that he would be making use of his Celtic squad over the next three weeks, after praising Liam Scales.
The Irish defender has been one of our biggest surprise stories from this season. His rise since starting in the derby win at Ibrox has been mightily impressive. Scales is now likely to be considered a first-pick under Rodgers, even with Cameron Carter-Vickers now back in action.
Rodgers continued a theme of talking up the Republic of Ireland international, before making it obvious that there wasn’t such a thing as a first-choice XI at Celtic. With so many games coming up, it’s about the squad.
“It’s a great story, Rodgers said at his Friday press conference. “Maybe six or seven weeks ago, he was wondering if he was going to be here. As he sits in here today, he’s played in the Champions League and he’s a full international. (Celtic YouTube)
When asked if Scales was an example that fringe players could make the position theirs, he added: “Can do, but modern football has changed.
“We play seven games in 21 days. I can tell you now it won’t be the same team in all of the games. But I think what you can do is give yourself a great opportunity to play as often as you can.”
With Celtic going from weekend to midweek football over the next three weeks, Rodgers is right to suggest that it will be a team game. This time last year, Ange Postecoglou often made big changes from match to match.
The majority of the rotation was saved for the full-back and wing positions, although some other areas were rotated too.
It will be interesting to see what Rodgers does with his centre-back options in the coming weeks. Cameron Carter-Vickers is likely to play most games, while Liam Scales is deserving of that opportunity too.
However, Nat Phillips, Gustaf Lagerbielke and Maik Nawrocki will all be there until January at least. That’s before we even mention Yuki Kobayashi and Stephen Welsh.
Suddenly, we’ve gone from virtually no fit centre-halves to having a plethora of them.
In other news, Rodgers also spoke about Kobayashi’s lack of game time
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