Emilio Izaguirre
Neil Lennon is hopeful of having Emilio Izaguirre and James Forrest available for next Saturday’s trip to Dundee United.
Forrest has been missing since picking up an ankle injury in the 3-0 win over Hearts on September 11 while Izaguirre has missed the last two matches with a small muscle tear.
With the first derby match against Rangers less than three weeks away Lennon is looking to have both men back in action after some intensive treatment.
“Emilio should start training at the beginning of next week for the run up to Dundee United,” Lennon told the Celtic View.
“James has had some inflammation on his ankle so we have tried to address that- hopefully he will maybe start training early next week with a view to the Dundee United game.”
There’s further good news on a couple of other injuries with Lennon adding: “Charlie (Mulgrew) might be another week or two and Thomas (Rogne) is not too far away either. Paddy McCourt will hopefully start training again next week as well.”
Lennon goes to Tannadice on the back of a seven game winning run in the SPL with his overall 100% record stretching back to 15 games.
Celtic have conceeded goals in each of their last three matches which has drawn attention and criticism of the defence despite maintaining their winning run.
A year ago Tony Mowbray was telling anyone who would listen about how he’d ideally like to bring in eleven new players in the January transfer but Lennon takes a totally different tact and is fiercely supportive of his players.
The hoops boss said: “It just seems at times that people in the media, or whoever asks the questions, always want to look at the negative aspects of the game.
“They take for granted all the good bits and that’s to be expected. Well it’s not.
“The players have to go and perform still have to go out and perform at that level and still find bits of magic at the quality they are producing- so I pay them great credit for that.”
One player that Lennon was especially pleased with was former team-mate Shaun Maloney who notched his 50th goal for the club in the 2-1 win over Hamilton.
Lennon added: “We have been delighted with Shaun. He has shown a level of consistency now that has probably been missing from his game due to injury more than anything else for the last couple of years.
“We have known we had a good player on our hands and we have got that, I’ve known Shaun since he was 17. He is a very intelligent player and obviously works very hard on his technique at free kicks so we know that he is a threat.
“He has been due one for a while and it was an absolute pearler and to get the header from a corner was a bonus as well. It’s probably the type of goal that he hasn’t scored for a while. His play in general has been very good and he deserves all he gets.”
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We have really missed Forrest and hopefully him an Lizzy will be back for Dunt.
Still, why all these onjuries? Matchstick men?
Heres to Forrest and Izzy coming back. Hopefully a bit of balance will naturally grace the team sheet for once.
I hope Shaun nets bags full this season and gets well into double figures in the scoring charts. I can imagine he will get a fair few lay ons as well assists and the likes.
Would be nice for Stokes, Hooper, Sammy and Murphy to become prolific all at once for us, but I think e-bay are all out of magic dust for the moment. (From the previous comment I think just after I said ‘Murphy’ I realised the LSD I layered my jam toast with this morning finally kicked in. )