Is Celtic’s Marian Shved injury not as bad as first feared?

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It looks as though Celtic star Marian Shved’s injury may not be as bad as first feared.

It was reported earlier last week that the Ukrainian winger had come back from international duty early after picking up a knock (Daily Record).

The injury leaves Celtic with just one fit and natural right-winger in James Forrest. Forrest nabbed the winner at Hamilton, but there’s no denying that everyone wants Shved back as soon as possible for depth.

But it looks as though the winger may not be too far away from a return in any case. We weren’t given an update on how long Shved would be out for. However, there were a couple of signs over the weekend that the injury isn’t too serious.

First off, we had Neil Lennon’s presser on the Hamilton game. When he was discussing the international players, he said via Celtic’s Twitter that all of the internationalists had come back fit and available. The only injuries we apparently had were Nir Bitton, Jozo Simunovic, and Mikey Johnston respectively. Nothing was said about Shved.

Marian Shved spotted on Celtic TV training video

In addition to Lennon’s comments, Shved was also seen several times in Celtic TV’s training video from last week. Therefore, if he is still struggling with a knock, he certainly didn’t show it.

There has been no update from Lennon or the club on where Shved is currently at. Managers can sometimes leave out long-term injury absentees from their updates to the press. However, it’s clear from the training video that Shved most certainly isn’t that.

But despite the fact he trained and Lennon didn’t mention him in his presser, he then missed yesterday’s 1-0 win at Hamilton altogether. He wasn’t even on the bench, which is quite a damning indictment of his current situation.

That’s not unusual of course. Shved missed the 2-0 win over Rangers as well despite not carrying any knock going into the match. Lennon has only included the Ukrainian in five of a possible 14 match-day squads.

But it’s unclear as to whether he’s currently carrying a slight knock, or whether he’s just out the team through the form of Forrest.

At the moment, Shved looks far from regular contention regardless of what the answer is. But with a busy period of games coming up, hopefully we can see more of the former Karpaty Lviv man.