Colby Donovan

Must be injured, surely.

 

Needs to keep starting.

 

Bananas decision today if he’s not.

 

Can only hope he was injured today because Ralston should never, ever be in the team ahead of him.

 

We need to be very careful with him. Look what happened to Tierney and the state of him now, after being over used as a young guy.
AJ coming back slightly earlier will also help the situation.

 

He was pish v Braga hooked at HT, so I can see why he was left out today.. he'll have bad games, consistency the most difficult thing for a young player..

I like him, but hopefully AJ not far away ..

 

He wasn’t the only one though, Kasper was worse and never got hooked or left out. If it is because that then it’s * man management destroying the boys confidence.

 

Not sure, got to protect him too.. a lot of tension today, two bad displays in a row for such a young player can be difficult to recover from.

 

Surprised Donovan wasn't on the bench at least but would agree.

Today ended well but there was a lot of unhappiness today. A performance similar to midweek would not have helped him one bit.

 

Fair point but also pressure is how you see if players will cope as well as good experience for them in how to deal with it.

 

Colby has to be ahead of Ralston now surely. Hopefully thats also the thoughts of Brendan.

Once AJ is back, Colby has to be our 2nd choice/main backup. I don’t want to see Ralston on the bench again never mind the starting 11.

 

Forget the money and think of the player, that’s what we should be doing. Tierney is done at 27, I’d hate for us to be responsible for doing the same thing again.

 

You certainly are

 

Credit to Colby
In his absence, Johnston has seen the right-back slot being shared by several suitors, including Anthony Ralston, new arrival Marcelo Saracchi, and, most notably, academy graduate Colby Donovan.

Thanks to a knock of his own, regular back-up Ralston was unavailable for a portion of games, which allowed 19-year-old Donovan to stake his claim, featuring in matches in both domestic and European competition.

Having been namedropped by the young defender as a mentor in recent weeks, Johnston has liked what he has seen from the Scotland U21 international. "He's been great," he admitted. "I think the biggest thing that stuck out to everyone about Colby is his personality, but I don't think that was ever in question.

"Now that I've been in this changing room for the past couple of years and been out, and played at Celtic Park, I know what it takes and what a Celtic player looks like at this point, and he looks like one in terms of the personality and the confidence that he has on the ball.

"That's something you need, especially as a young kid, to go into those kinds of environments like he did in Belgrade and be able to handle the moment and not look overwhelmed. It's been really impressive - he's been like a duck to water.

Johnston continued: "That's something that you want to see because this club is renowned for pushing through young talent, having a Scottish core, having a core that you can look back on as a fan and be proud of because you can look around the team and say, 'that boy's from five miles down the road, he's from my local town,' all these different things.

"That's part of the fabric and DNA of this football club. So, he's done so well so far at taking it all on board. I think he's going to be a great player, and we're really lucky to have him here at Celtic."