Opinion: Assessing Celtic's injury situation ahead of key fixture

With Celtic facing Rangers in a huge game in the Premiership title race on Sunday, it will be important for the Hoops to have the best team available to game the team the best chance of winning the game and going six points clear at the top of the table.

With that is mind, it is worth examining the current injury situation at Celtic ahead of the game. The good news for Ange Postecoglou so far is that there have been no injuries picked up by any Celtic player that is away on international duty, but there is no doubt that the Hoops boss will be keeping a close watch on the players that are still to play games for their countries this week.

Looking at the players that could miss the game, the biggest doubts have to be over Kyogo and Tom Rogic.

Kyogo has been out of action with a hamstring issue since December, and even though he has returned to training he has not yet been fit enough to return to the Celtic squad. 

That most likely means that he will probably not be involved in the trip to Ibrox, but will hopefully still feature before the end of the season.

Rogic went off with an ankle injury in Celtic’s win over Ross County, and had to pull out of Australia’s World Cup qualifiers as a result. Ange Postecoglou told Celtic TV last week that the player suffered a ‘medium-term’ injury, so that might well see him miss out against Rangers.

Perhaps the only other player that there are doubts over is Daizen Maeda. The Japanese striker pulled out of their World Cup qualifiers with what the Japanese FA called ‘poor condition’ which could mean fatigue, but we will presumably find out more on his situation this week.

The Hoops will want Maeda to be available for the game, as he has been in excellent form recently, and looks to be