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Is Lenny About To Pull The Ultimate Team Selection Shocker On Gerrard’s Hapless Team?

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Earlier this week, I wrote about how even in a scenario where we had seven key players missing for tomorrow’s game that I still thought we had enough about us to win.

But what if the equation was entirely different from that, and we were missing just three?

Because today there’s a flicker of a possibility that Christie, Jullien Edouard and Ajeti will all be in the team, meaning that we’re missing only Forrest, Bitton and Abd Elhamed.

What are the chances of that? I think Ajeti and Jullien will play.

I think Edouard is 40-60, and I wouldn’t rule him out, and that Christie is probably 20-80 and should be considered doubtful at best. Oddly enough, he’s the fittest of the seven players … which is why Celtic will push and push until the last possible moment, in the hope of a common sense solution.

Look, it doesn’t get less absurd the more you look at. Edouard could start in spite of having had the bug whereas Christie can’t even be on the bench because he was exposed to it, even when every test he’s had has come back negative.

Arsenal have been told that Tierney will be available to play for them … we are watching that situation very closely indeed, and it has led to our further demands for clarification. If Kieran does play, then people are going to have answer to Celtic about why Ryan can’t.

So the possibility remains that all of these guys will be able to play a role in the team.

Edouard would obviously be the biggest boost … the coaches and the manager will give him right up until the final moment, and they will assess his health in every way they can. It will depend on how the big chap himself feels … you cannot take risks with this stuff.

If Edouard is in good health and raring to go, Lenny should unleash him.

Otherwise, keep him on the bench or in the stands.

If Ajeti, Klimala and Griffiths are fit we’ve got all the firepower we need anyway, and then some.

I still expect it to be enough.

What a boost this would be though if even Eddie made it. If Christie was somehow cleared for this game as well I think you’d hear the wailing in Sevconia wherever you were in the world. The squeals of “conspiracy!” will never have been louder.

This will keep them guessing and that’s just fine by me. Sevco should be wracked with some doubts prior to this one; all the media spotlight has been on how pressure we’re under, as if this is a new scenario for us.

They are the ones who have to win or face the prospect of a five-point gap early in the campaign.

You notice there’s been little discussion of that.

The lift this would give our whole team would be momentous though; at the start of last week, almost from the minute Edouard tested positive, we really were looking at this and thinking it might be a major crisis point. It has been costly, but it hasn’t been that.

It met yet turn out even better than it initially seemed.

It would be worth it just to hear the screams of frustration and rage across the city.

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