Ange Postecoglou has explained the absences of Tony Ralston and Josip Juranovic from the friendly against Rapis Vienna.
The international duo sat out Wednesday’s 7-0 win over Wiener Viktoria but were expected to be recalled for today’s match which ended in a 3-3 draw.
Osaze Urhoghide continued at right-back- playing the full 90 minutes with Postecoglou making 10 substitutions at half-time.
Ralston and Juranovic pushed each other on throughout last season, speaking to the Glasgow Times the Celtic boss said:
Tony got a knock yesterday and just wasn’t 100 percent for today so we erred on the side of caution. He should be fine for Wednesday.
Josip is fine, he trained fully this morning, but he missed the first part of the week so we are trying to get all the guys into a programme where they do a bit of work before we expose them to game time.
Credit to Osaze, he played 90 minutes on Wednesday and 90 minutes today. The one thing about him is he is a warrior. He works hard. We had him pencilled in for 90 minutes today, and he got through it.
Celtic’s returning internationals were given a bruising 45 minutes from Rapid with the local referee reluctant to take action with a number of challenges that would have been punished in a competitive match let alone a friendly.
After the break Chris Jullien and Bosun Lawal had a difficult time with Rapid scoring twice, hitting the crossbar and forcing a couple of eye-catching saves from Scott Bain.
On Wednesday Celtic face Banok Ostrava before returning home to take on Blackburn Rovers on Saturday.
