NEIL LENNON says that Odsonne Edouard is ready and ‘itching to play’ for Celtic tonight in Riga after being rested for the weekend win over Livingston.
Celtic’s star man was left on the bench for the 3-2 victory over Gary Holt’s side, with his manager later revealing that Edouard had told him he was feeling fatigued, and subsequently denying his omission had anything to do with transfer speculation surrounding the striker.
And as the team arrived in the Latvian capital, Lennon insisted that the 22-year-old is refreshed and ready to sink Riga this evening.
“He’s trained well the last couple of days and he’s looking forward to playing,” Lennon said. “He’s itching to play. To be fair, all of them are.
“We have a lot of games and, sometimes, you have to listen to where the player is coming from.
“He missed a couple of games, came back in and three games in a week might have been too much for him.
“We made the right decision. We won the [Livingston] game, he’s fresh and it sets us up nicely for this game.
“We are trying to keep it as fresh and as balanced as we can. If we can negotiate this, it’s Hibs at the weekend, then another Euro game, then St Johnstone after that, so it’s still a lot of games.”
Defender Christopher Jullien didn’t make the trip as he is still suffering from the back spasm that has kept him sidelined since the win over Ross County, but Lennon says the rest of his squad are in decent fettle despite being confined to barracks as a precaution during their trip to Latvia.
“The boys are okay,” he said. They are restricted to their hotel, so that is something we have not used to. It’s been hot.
“Basically, we came out early because we wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly.
“You are not sure really what you are going into and it is very strict. We were tested again on Wednesday morning and that was our second test of the week.
“We can’t leave the hotel and can only go to the ground for training and then for the game.
“We just wanted to cover all of the bases and make sure there were no mishaps.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here