Lennon enthuses over his ‘five new faces’
Despite the lack of transfer activity Neil Lennon has five ‘new faces’ in pre-season training at Celtic’s Loughborough University training base.
Last summer Lennon had his squad at a camp in Austria for pre-season matches but hadn’t made any additions to his side.
Mikael Lustig, Dedryk Boyata, Filip Benkovic, Cristian Gamboa and Kieran Tierney all left the club last summer with Lennon trying to integrate Chris Jullien and Boli Bolingoli into the side during Champions League qualifiers.
In January Patryk Klimala and Ismaila Sori were brought in but as the side hit top gear neither got much time on the park to impress.
There has been minimal turnover in the first team squad with the hoops boss ensuring that everyone is fully upto speed for the critical season ahead.
?? “The players are working very, very hard. We’re trying to ramp it up now because we’ll be coming in to games pretty soon.”
Speaking exclusively to @CelticTV‘s Gerry McCulloch, #CelticFC manager Neil Lennon explains the importance of pre-season for the Bhoys ? pic.twitter.com/egrHxnFzOd
— Celtic Football Club (from ?) (@CelticFC) July 8, 2020
Asked about Klimala and Soro, Lennon said:
They’ve started to really integrate well, I’m delighted with both of them. It was just a short turnaround for them when they came in in January to March. Now they’ve had a good pre-season.
Chris Jullien has had his first pre-season with us and Boli (Bolingoli) is the same so hopefully these guys, Moi Elyounoussi as well, will get the benefit.
Quality players who are part of the preparations, they are getting their fitness, physical development and the team bonding that we are doing at the minute. There’s not too many changes and that’s really important for us going into the start of the season.
Next week Celtic travel to France for three matches against Lyon, Nice and Paris Saint Germain as they build up for the opening SPFL match against Hamilton Accies on August 2.