Ange Has To Consider The Calculus Of Risk When He Names Todays Celtic’s Team.

Today, when Ange names the Celtic team, we’re going to see a rather interesting risk versus reward calculation made. I don’t believe it will him massive changes in it, but I do expect there to be some. Maybe five across the whole team.

We have one hell of a lot of games to come in the next few weeks, and all of them are going to be trickier than this one today. That might tempt the manager to go out seriously under-strength against Raith, but I don’t think he will.

But nor do I think he’ll ignore the obvious; this is not a game that we should be risking key footballers for. Which isn’t to say that the Scottish Cup isn’t desirable; having won the League Cup we can smell another treble, and will certainly not deplete the side enough to risk a place in the tournament. Yet bigger things lie ahead.

Europe for one. Ange says he thinks we can win the Europa Conference League; I don’t know how seriously we should take the possibility, but we can certainly go far in it, presuming that’s something we want to do in a close title race, a subject I’ll return to at some other time.

Ange wants to go far in it though, and who can blame him for that? This team is flying at the moment, and we’re competitive across the boards. Ange thinks this squad is strong enough to do it across all fronts, and none of us is anything but happy to roll with that. It’s a great opportunity for us. Yet it’s not one without risks, as he knows full well.

At some point I think Ange will need to start thinking about priorities, and the obvious thing to conclude is that the league title is the foremost consideration. Even winning the Europa Conference League will feel like a major comedown if the league title ends up somewhere else and Ange will know this as well as anybody.

So the team selection will be interesting. Some rotation should be expected, but not a lot. Either way it will be a gamble. It’s up to the boss to calculate the odds.