Plastic test for bhoys

Celtic’s youth side hit the plastic this afternoon with the fixture against St Johnstone switched to Recreation Park Alloa with a 3.30pm kick off.

The recent weather has hit pitches hard across the country with a backlog building of fixtures in the u-20 league.

Celtic have a 10 point advantage over Aberdeen and Dundee United, who have a game in hand, with the hoops keen to get the game played today rather than face a fixture pile up.

John Kennedy said: “There aren’t too many grass pitches in good condition just now and postponing another game would give us a bit of a headache down the line.

“We’d prefer to play the game, albeit it’s on astroturf but we want to go ahead and play. We’ve trained on astro a few times ourselves so it shouldn’t be too big a change for us.

“Over the last few weeks we’ve did a fair bit of indoor training. St Johnstone have played on astroturf a few times recently and both teams will want to pass the ball around.”

Celtic have only lost twice in the new look u-20 league with St Johnstone winning 2-1 at Firhill in October.

Kennedy added: “There’s lots more to come from this squad of players although we’re in a cup final and top of the league.

“Our players have plenty to motivate themselves. They know what is expected and that St Johnstone are a good team.

“There’s no better motivation than being top of the league at this stage of the season and we want to keep that going.

“St Johnstone have scored a few goals recently, we want to up the ante in terms of ourperformance and have that opportunity today.”