Ange Postecoglou has ruled Jota out of Celtic’s “must-win” Champions League showdown against Shakhtar Donetsk at Parkhead but says the Portuguese star should be back in contention for the weekend trip to Livingston.
Swedish stopper Carl Starfelt also won’t feature against the Ukrainians at Parkhead in the Scottish champions penultimate Group F fixture. Celtic are already out of European football’s premier competition but have a slim chance of dropping into the Europa League by finishing third.
However, they need to get their first victory of the group campaign with Celtic currently sitting bottom of the section with just one point which was picked up from their 1-1 draw against Shakhtar Donetsk in Poland. But they will have to do it without Jota, named in Portugal’s provisional World Cup squad, who has been missing since coming off at half-time in the win over St Johnstone at McDiarmid Park earlier this month.
Postecoglou offered an injury update ahead of the match and said: “Jota had his last rehab session and is expected to start training with us again after the game and be available again for the weekend. Dave Turnbull’s alright. Carl’s back in training which is great but it’s too early tomorrow. The idea is to get him back in training in the next few days and see how it goes.”
The Aussie knows the significance of the game as Celtic trail their opponents by four points and even a win would leave them needing to take something from their final fixture - a daunting trip to holders Real Madrid. Postecoglou said: “In the context of us continuing in Europe it’s a must-win game and our ambition is to try and achieve that and keep us alive. It’s not that because I think we deserve something you automatically get it or you feel like you’re owed something.
“My thought process around this whole thing is that if you keep putting yourself in that position of creating chances then eventually you get your rewards and that’s the key for us. We have to tackle it in the same manner, particularly here at home, put pressure on the opposition and if we create the same number of chances then it’s about converting them. From my perspective, it’s a lot better being in that sort of situation rather than trying to figure out how to create chances to try and score goals.
“European football in general we found last season in the Europa League the physical demands are greater than the Premiership because for the most part of Premiership games even though we try and play high tempo we have a lot of control of the games which means we’re not doing too much running back towards our goal.
“But you’re playing against better opposition and it’s more of a challenge for us to maintain that tempo when you don’t have the ball. But within that context I think physically, in all the games, we’ve performed really well but the difficulty then is recovery and back up for your next game when they’re so close together.”
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