Every Celtic star still out injured and what we know about their return

Add as preferred source on Google

Celtic appear to be over the worst of the injury troubles that have provided a huge challenge at the start of the season.

It has been a tough old period for Brendan Rodgers and his squad. In addition to losing three key players from last season and bedding in nine new signings, we’ve had to deal with a spate of injuries rarely seen before.

At one point we had around ten first-team players missing, and key ones too in the shape of Cameron Carter-Vickers and Reo Hatate.

Those two, Alistair Johnston, Yuki Kobayashi, Hyeongyu Oh and more have all now returned from issues at the start of the season and the picture looks a million times better. However, we are still waiting on a few final faces to return with some taking longer than others.

Liel Abada seems to be the real long-term one at present. He has been out for around a month after picking up a thigh injury while on international duty.

Rodgers has already confirmed that Abada will miss a period of months. He was seen recently on crutches so we can assume he’s a long way away from even returning to training. If he plays before the end of 2023 we’ll probably be doing well.

Summer signing Maik Nawrocki hasn’t been seen since our cup loss at Kilmarnock. He’s missed our last eight games through a hamstring injury suffered right at the end of the Rugby Park clash.

Nawrocki was initially grouped together with Cameron Carter-Vickers in injury terms. However, his issue seems to have been more severe than the American who returned against Lazio last week. It’s hard to say for sure with Nawrocki but you’d certainly hope to see him back over the next month or so.

We may not see fellow defender Stephen Welsh until November or December after he damaged ligaments in his ankle.

Daizen Maeda is the most recent addition to this list after he withdrew from international duty with Japan. We know that it’s injury-related, but have no other information at this stage.

Fellow wingers Mikey Johnston and Marco Tilio are both technically still to return from the injuries they began the season with. Johnston has made the squad for our opening two Champions League clashes while Tilio is yet to be on the bench.

Johnston is away with the Republic of Ireland during this international break but Tilio hasn’t been called up by Australia. Both will surely appear for Celtic at some point soon.

In other news, Celtic supporters set for a nervy fortnight as far from ideal Carter-Vickers status confirmed