Moi Elyounoussi ha revealed that he played in the League Cup Final with a broken toe!
The winger had been out of action for almost a month when he was picked for the Hampden showdown but after 45 minutes he was replaced by Mikey Johnston.
That 45 minutes proved costly with Elyounoussi having to wait until last week’s draw at Livingston to start an SPFL match.
Covering an interview in the Celtic View the Daily Record reports:
In the League Cup final, I played 45 minutes with a broken toe. I was delighted that we won that game, the derby and the cup, even if it wasn’t exactly ideal for me from an injury perspective.
Everyone wants to play in these games, the big ones, especially at Ibrox. I haven’t played there, so it will be a special moment for me.
I’m looking forward to it. We’ve got a full week’s worth of preparation under our belts before this one, which is good. We’ve trained well this week so far, and all we want now is to go there and put in a good performance. There is so much hype around the fixture and for me the League Cup final exceeded those expectations.
The atmosphere at Hampden was electric but it was a bit surreal as well because of the 50-50 split in the stands. It will be a different story at Ibrox but we want to give our fans something to cheer about and be as loud as they possibly can be.”
Despite his storming performances in the autumn Elyounoussi is unlikely to start Sunday’s match at Ibrox with Greg Taylor and Jonny Hayes likely to be ahead of him for a place on the left wing.
Neil Lennon has plenty of options for Sunday’s match which could see the hoops line up in a 3-5-2 formation or 4-2-3-1.
Olivier Ntcham and Jozo Simunovic are injury concerns but the return of Hatem Abd Elhamed and Jeremie Frimpong adds to the options available to the Celtic boss.