Celtic players won’t be having a free week in the run up to their Scottish Cup semi-final on Sunday.Â
While their opponents initially focus on a Europa League tie against Braga Ange Postecoglou will be putting his squad through their paces at Lennoxtown.Â
Over the last month Celtic’s schedule has been down to one match a week with St Johnstone suffering from the switch on Saturday.Â
Often as this time of the season teams can start to drop the intensity of their game but all along Postecoglou has been planning on his side hitting peak form for the matches that decide the trophies.Â
?? “There’s always a kind of edge to these games.”
Ange Postecoglou looks ahead to this Sunday’s @ScottishCup Glasgow Derby in his exclusive #CelticTV interview ??https://t.co/1jrCiihb9b#Exclusive pic.twitter.com/0FGw1Nh5Wd
— Celtic TV (@CelticTV) April 12, 2022
For us, it’s not about ‘We’ve got a week so we can sort of relax’, it’s a week where we can put solid work into the players.
If we had a game (during the week) it would still work the same way. I think our battle at the start of the year was that we didn’t have a robust and strong enough squad to cope sometimes with three games in a week and keep our levels up.
Now I’d be confident if we had midweek games it wouldn’t affect our performance on the weekend. Because we’ve got that extra time, we’re going to use it.
Postecoglou’s main concern this week will be over the fitness of Giorgos Giakoumakis who had to be replaced by Liel Abada during the first half of the win over St Johnstone.Â
With Kyogo Furuhashi now yet ready to play from the start Daizen Maeda could play through the centre if the former VVV Venlo striker fails to make it.