With three creative players out through injury Saturday’s match against Hibs is an opportunity for Brendan Rodgers to shake things up a little.
When there was a surplus of midfielders the case for playing a 4-2-3-1 set up was obvious but without Patrick Roberts, Stuart Armstrong and Tom Rogic there is more of a case for playing 4-4-2.
I really hate stats but at present 66% of our strikers are looking on from the sidelines which hasn’t really been successful with question marks against all three players.
Whether it was Leigh Griffiths or having two strikers on the park there was a marked improvement in the second half performance against Partick Thistle.
Ideally playing a 4-2-3-1 is the system that Rodgers wants to play but without that creative ‘number 10’ and with a strong strike force to call on playing 4-4-2 makes more sense at the moment. During the Deila days we’d never have had the luxury of leaving Griffiths or Moussa Dembele on the bench.
Hibs have drawn twice with Celtic this season, an 11 point lead is impressive but with two strikers playing on Saturday a very positive message can be sent out that the bhoys are back in business and ready to crush domestic ‘contenders’.