NIR BITTON is out of the Israel side for the crucial Euro 2020 play-off match against Scotland next Thursday after picking up an ankle knock in Celtic's win over Sarajevo last night.
The defender was caught late in a challenge in the early stages of the 1-0 victory in Sarajevo, and had to be replaced by countryman Hatem Elhamed.
Celtic manager Neil Lennon has therefore immediately ruled him out of his club's game against St Johnstone on Sunday, and the Hampden showdown later in the week.
“He’s badly twisted his ankle," Lennon said. "There’s swelling, so we need to wait and see.
“We can’t diagnose it until the swelling goes down which will take a day or two. But he’s out for Sunday and certainly out for the qualifiers as well.
“He’s been playing brilliantly. Hopefully, it won’t be too long, maybe just three or four weeks.”
Lennon meanwhile thinks that the win over Sarajevo can be just the thing to allow his team to get over the Champions League hangover that has been playing on their minds since their qualifying defeat to Ferencvaros.
“We could’ve won the game by more, but they were strong and well organised," he said. "They were better than Riga but we got better as the game went on.
“We’ve been playing well recent games - that’s three clean sheets and we’ve won the last seven games in all competitions.
“There was massive pressure on us, but that’s all from the Ferencvaros hangover. That was a game we should’ve won. We dominated that game and lost. We only had ourselves to blame. So, we’ve had to suffer the last three or four weeks.
“But we’ve won every game since Ferencvaros and the temperament of the players has been fantastic.
“Now the season’s really opened up for us. I think this will spark our season."
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