Riga star Antons Kurakins has admitted that he has no idea how his side will play against Celtic given the confusion surrounding their manager.
Oleg Kononov, their current boss, has had to jet back to Russia for family reasons and could miss Thursday’s Europa League third qualifying round clash with Celtic in Latvia. That’s left assistant Mihal Konevs in charge in the build-up.
However, it appears their manager’s absence has totally rocked preparations for the game, with Kurakins still unsure as to what the game-plan is or who is even going to play.
Celtic, meanwhile, have been preparing nicely with three wins in eight days leading up to the Riga fixture.
As quoted by the Daily Record, Kurakins said: “Our coach has some family issues, so I don’t know who will play and how we will play.
“It’s been a bit of a strange week. The coach will not be back from Russia. It’s not such a good period. It can be confusing, but we are just players. It is not our business, it is the business of the directors. Our job is to play and we just need to go and enioy the game.
“It won’t be an excuse. When the game starts, it will just be us and we’ll do our best.”
Celtic must be wary of false negativity
How often have we been here in the past? How many teams that we were due to face have supposedly come into the game in a crisis only to win the match?
Celtic must take absolutely all of this with a pinch of salt. Sure, their manager’s absence isn’t ideal, but they’ve been working with the assistant boss all week. There’s surely no way they aren’t working on a plan.
Kurakins says that he has no idea how Riga will play. That simply can’t be the case – not for such a crucial game for them that will kick-off in just under 36 hours.
This could just be mind games, regardless of whether there’s something in what Kurakins says here. We’ve seen it all before and been lured into that false sense of security on plenty of occasions.
Riga’s only real chance of winning the game is through complacency from Celtic’s perspective. So it’s not inconceivable to think that’s what Kurakins may have been going for here.
Regardless, you can expect Neil Lennon not to be paying much attention. He’ll know the task at hand will be a tricky one, regardless of whether Kononov is there or not.
In other news, we provide our predicted XI for tomorrow’s crucial Europa League qualifier in Latvia.
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