After escaping through the season relatively clear of injury Celtic seem to be having issues around Glasgow Derbies.
Back in March Brendan Rodgers had to go in without Callum McGregor, Austin Trusty and Liam Scales which resulted in Maik Nawrocki getting his first start, his first minutes in the SPFL this season.
McGregor was a key loss but will be fit for Ibrox, as will Scales and Trusty but elsewhere there will be key absences for the Celtic boss to juggle around.
Kasper Schmeichel hasn’t played for over a month with Jota out for between six to nine months.
Alistair Johnston will miss Ibrox as he gets treatment on a hip condition which leaves Rodgers down three players that would have been certain starters.
Celtic can still put out a strong Starting XI but on the bench there won’t be many options to call on, a key feature these days and an area that Rodgers has specialised in previously.
At today’s media conference Rodgers firstly addressed Jota’s injury:
It was the cruciate and it was worse than we’d hoped, really, so he starts on his journey of recovery from that now, but somewhere between six and nine months.
Alistair Johnson won’t be available. Ali’s been needing an injection into his hip for a period of time to ensure he was ready for the cup final, and in our preparation, we decided that we would do that after the Dundee United game.
So I picked him out of the game at the weekend, and most probably the St Mirren game and that gives him a few weeks to be ready for the cup final.
Dane Murray has had an issue with his knee, and he’ll be out for the rest of the season and then be ready for pre-season.
We’ve also got Yang-Hyun Jun back. Yang is back training with the squad, so we’ll give him one more day tomorrow and then we’ll see if he’s going to be available for the squad.
Daizen should be fine, and Nicolas was out. We’re just assessing him and a slight issue with his knee, but he should be okay. We had the scan on that, it’s just a little bit of bruising, but he should be okay.
Tony Ralston should come in for Johnston, the midfield looks unaffected but up front a large amount of responsibility will be on Adam Idah and Daizen Maeda.
