There is certainly a bit of intrigue growing around the fitness of Celtic winger Jota.
The Portuguese talent hasn’t tended to miss many of our matches recently, but sat out Sunday’s 4-1 win over Kilmarnock.
Given that he hadn’t been included as an injured player by Ange Postecoglou in his pre-match press conference, his omission came as a bit of a surprise.
In the aftermath of the game in Ayrshire, Postecoglou appeared to clear up concerns over Jota as well as Cameron Carter-Vickers.
“It was a combination of things,” he told BBC Sportsound. “The pitch is not too kind to them. They pulled up pretty sore the last time they played on here. But I also wanted to freshen up the team a bit.”
So you would assume that, given this weekend’s game is on grass, Jota would be back in contention for a start.
He may still be. But he doesn’t appear to have been involved in training on Thursday.
As we covered earlier, training at Lennoxtown was more of an open event on Thursday as part of Celtic’s International Coaches Convention 2023.
A look through the various images associated with the hashtag #CelticICC2023 shows a number of training images but no sign of Jota.
The former Benfica man last featured for us in our derby win over Rangers, going off just minutes after he rounded Allan McGregor for our third goal.
There was no evidence of an injury for that game, and Jota has not missed the match day squad in any other match since the World Cup.
We should find out a little more from the manager tomorrow. It would be nice to hear that Jota is back in training and see him on the Celtic Park pitch come Saturday.
In other news, it does seem like Cameron Carter-Vickers will return to the fold against Motherwell
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