Kolo Toure will be Celtic’s wildcard signing for the Champions League ties against Astana.
After the matches against Lincoln Red Imps and Leicester City Brendan Rodgers had spoken optimistically about adding to his squad for Wednesday’s match.
Toure has been left behind to concentrate on his fitness meaning that Rodgers will have to go with the squad that made heavy weather of getting past the champions of Gibraltar.
After securing Toure Rodgers was asked about the chances of adding a different wildcard and admitted: “That’s something that we need to wait and see. We’ve got some work going on behind the scenes so hopefully we can get some business done. It’s obviously going to be tight, we leave Monday afternoon.”
Toure is likely to be involved against Barcelona at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday but the return leg against Astana looks like a big ask for the former Liverpool defender.
After a long chase to get Toure to Glasgow Rodgers said: “I brought him into Liverpool to add that bit of experience and help to the centre-halves there at the time, and I think you saw from his impact there, particularly last season, he was a very important player for Jurgen [Klopp] towards the end of the season and played in the Europa League final,” he said.
“In the big games he was outstanding for me when I was there, and he looks after himself. He’s a wonderful professional. With a lot of young players in our squad, he can really help them and be of great experience to someone like Scott Brown, who is a wonderful leader.
“I would think that Wednesday (away to Astana) would be too soon for him, I’d probably be looking more towards the weekend, give him some game time against Barcelona to assess where he’s at before the following week. He’ll need to stay and work. All being well, he’ll get a good week’s training.”
