Celtic begin the new look u-20 league tonight against St Mirren at Firhill, kick-off 7pm.
The new age group is designed to bridge the gap between youth and first team football with three overage players and also an any age goalkeeper able to be fielded.
Celtic will be putting the emphasis on youth with the bulk of the squad coming from last season’s u-17 side which featured Stuart Findlay and Lewis Kidd who gained some experience in the Next Gen Series.
John Kennedy’s side spent a fortnight training in Portugal and had a friendly at Selkirk on Saturday to prepare for the new campaign with the coach looking forward to the challenge.
“This will be a good test for the players,” the hoops coach stated. “The friendlies are over with and this is a different environment, it’s competition time and we’re looking forward to seeing how they respond.
“We’re very confident that they’ll rise to the occasion and looking forward to getting things underway. We’re excited and looking forward to the match, in pre-season you build everything towards the first match and suddenly it’s upon us. We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.
“Last season we started with a 4-3 win at Hibs- I’d accept that again even if it was a rollercoaster watching from the sidelines.
“In terms of opposition we’ve not had much time to assess St Mirren but we’re concentrating on ourselves. We’re a little bit in the dark about ourselves because we’ve yet to play a competitive match and have a very young team.”
Celtic finished last season with the best ever record for a 12-team SPL youth league and hammered Queen of the South 8-0 in the final of the SFA Youth Cup at Hampden.
Kennedy will be working with an almost totally new squad at an older age group and accepts that matching last season’s results could be a tall order.
“You always aspire to win things,” he admitted. “But you also have to bear in mind as coaches that they are a young side and it’s about their development more than anything else.
“We hope that they have the winning mentality but at the same time if things aren’t going to plan in every game we have to step back abd realise that they are young and on the learning curve.
“As much as we want things to happen we’ll keep things in perspective.
“Our pre-season has helped them adapt to full-time football, the tempo we play at and what we ask of them.
“It’s good for these boys to test themselves against bigger and better players and teams and good for us as coaches to see what stage that they are at in their development.”
Entry to tonight’s match is from the Jackie Husband stand, you can follow the action on twitter.
CELTIC XI v Selkirk: Leonardo Fasan: Mikey Miller, Paddy McNally, Stuart Findlay, Callum Watters; Denny Johnstone, Lewis Kidd, Jamie Lindsay, Liam Henderson; Jake Kirwin, Luke Donnelly (Eoghan O’Connell)
SUBS: Glenn Daniels, Rhys Delaney, Fiacre Kelleher, Trialist
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