Celtic’s development side will again rely on the club’s academy system to form the backbone of this season’s team which will play their home matches at Cappielow.
After two season’s as an u-20 league, that had replaced the u-19 league, the hoops will be playing in the SPFL Development League which is effectively a return to the old Reserve League which was abandoned in 2008 because Rangers and other clubs couldn’t afford to run a side at that level.
Five outfield players over 20-years-old will be allowed, plus an overage goalkeeper, but Stevie Frail will stick with the youth format that has delivered the title in each of the last five seasons.
As well as producing Liam Henderson, Darnell Fisher and Eoghan O’Connell for the first team squad Ronny Deila has brought in John Kennedy as part of his backroom team.
Kennedy worked with Frail for three seasons and used his knowledge of the academy to bring in Aidan McIlduff for the recent friendly with LSK Linz.
On Saturday the Development side enjoyed their first public match of pre-season beating East Kilbride 5-1 thanks to a double from Bahrudin Atajic with Paul McMullan, Calum Waters and Joe Thomson also scoring.
With the first team in Germany and u-17’s winning the Dennis Law Cup in Aberdeen the development side was made up of a few experienced heads such as Atajic, Marcus Fraser, Paul George and Jackson Irvine, last season’s u-19 side including Jamie Lindsay and Paul McMullan plus others stepping up from last season’s u-17 side and a mystery trialist believed to be from Uruguay.
There was good performances throughout the side with substitutes Joe Thomson and Aidan Nesbitt keeping the tempo going with Frail well pleased by the trip to the K Park in East Kilbride.
“It was a good game for us,” the hoops coach said. “We got the invite to come along and play East Kilbride. It’s a fantastic facility backed by great people so it was a pleasing day.
“We had a mainly young squad and have a lot of games coming up. We’re still early in our pre-season work with everything is geared towards 5th August and our first competitive game (at ‘home’ to St Mirren at Cappielow).
“Playing in public brings an edge to your game, we’d played a few matches at Lennoxtown but having a crowd watching gives us something different and is closer to the league matches that we play.”
Looking ahead to the new league campaign Frail added: “There are a couple of extra over-age players available, smaller clubs might use that and our new manager might want to use it for anyone that need game time.
“I don’t see the extra over-age players making much difference to ourselves, we didn’t really use it last season. We like to put our younger players in against seasoned professionals which makes it almost like a reserve league.”
On Saturday Celtic make the long journey north to take on Turiff United.
CLICK HERE for Celtic’s Development League fixtures