CARL STARFELT looks set to miss Celtic’s opening game of the Premiership season against Aberdeen next week as the defender continues his recovery from a hamstring injury.
The Sweden international wasn’t included in the squad who defeated Norwich City 2-0 yesterday at Celtic Park to round off their pre-season preparations, and he has been training away from the main group throughout the summer.
Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou hopes that Starfelt can resume full training in the coming days, but conceded that he may be another couple of weeks away from making a return to the first team.
"We're hoping he'll join in training at some point this week,” Postecoglou said.
“He's in the last stages and doing all the physical stuff away from the group. So, knock on wood, he's passed every stage and the handover to the football department should happen next week. "That means that hopefully within a week or two he's ready to go.”
Postecoglou gave debuts to new signings Moritz Jenz and Aaron Mooy in the win over Dean Smith’s English Championship outfit, and he expects that there will be further business in the days to come both in terms of players arriving and leaving.
"We are still active and alert and still looking at some possibilities as I think we can still strengthen in a couple of areas,” he said. "It has to be the right one, the right player with the right type of profile. While the window's opening there's always stuff happening incoming and outgoing so we will see how things pan out.
“It was a good hit-out [against Norwich]. It’s our last friendly game before the season starts and you want it to be competitive and our performance was good. We worked hard and controlled the game for the most part. We played in their half and all the things we want to see.
“It felt like the players felt pretty confident and had some self-belief out there which is pretty important going into the season.
“Even when we made the substitutions I don’t think we dropped off too much. It has in the last couple of games which I was disappointed about but today we still maintained our intensity.
“So overall it was a decent hit-out.”
