Just when you thought it was safe to say that our injury issues are behind us, eah?
Now we have two players who are racing to prove their fitness in the run up to the weekend.
David Turnbull joins the big Greek Giakoumakis on the maybe list.
Neither has been decisively ruled out. Neither has been told they’ve definitely got no chance to play, and the manager has indicated that both are still in the running.
Giakoumakis seems to think he’ll be okay but the club wants to do some scans to find out.
Losing the big chap would be tough on us.
But it’s not a blow from which we will struggle to recover or anything like that.
The Greek is a fantastic striker but we have other fantastic front players at Parkhead now. Who hasn’t been impressed by Maeda? I think his pace, through the middle, would cause them all sorts of problems. Kyogo obviously terrifies them.
But we also have Abada, who is perfectly comfortable playing in a central striking role if we deemed that necessary or we were in the greatest need and his goals this season have more than proven his ability to step into the breach if we required it.
We’re scoring from everywhere right now.
The goals at the weekend came from six different players and we scored five of them when Giakoumakis wasn’t on the pitch and before Kyogo was … that is a measure of how strong we are right now.
And if this is true in the forward area, it’s even more true in the midfield where the range of options we have at our disposal must be terrifying for clubs coming up against us right now.
Hatate is looking back to his best. Rogic is the big game player with a happy record of scoring against Ibrox’s clubs, and he likes a goal at Hampden too. O’Riley has been sensational.
A few months ago, any injury that we sustained would have seemed like a very bad blow indeed, but that was when we had a rash of players already out and before the January window where the options we introduced to the squad have proved to be transformational.
I don’t feel any real fears about replacing either of those two at the weekend, and whilst we should all hope they make it, to give Ange the best possible selection choices, I don’t know that Turnbull would have played anyway and there will be a debate about whether Kyogo or Giakoumakis is our best striker until the Japanese player is fully fit … and then there’ll be little doubt about the answer.
If he’s fully ready for the game then we have very little to worry about.
I hope our big Greek is right and fit to play
HH
Yes, before January and during a game, if it just wasn’t happening on the park, we didn’t have much on the bench to try and change the game.
After some decent – and early – January transfer business, we now have options off the bench in abundance.
The squad has managed extremely well in Kyogo’s absence – and he will now be desperate to get back to banging in the goals, starting this Sunday hopefully.