Olivier Ntcham

And if we’re not allowed to disagree with his decisions, we might as well shut down this forum.

 

Hopefully it's nothing too serious, he was excellent today and has started the season well.

 

I never got a good look at how he got injured, did he go into a tackle? It looked like something he didn't need to do on the half way line.. praying it's not serious..

 

No, I am suggesting that Eboué - an exciting prospect who has acquitted himself well whenever he had been called upon - should have replaced or started in place of Ntcham, for example, in order to minimise the risk of injury to the latter ahead of the most important games of our season.

Fair enough. I still maintain that the league would have been salvageable had we lost today. We need our best players available to us for the Champions League qualifiers, and we are already without some of them.

 

We risked both when we needn’t have risked either.

 

Rested for the first league game of the season * anyways i really hope he comes back soon, he’s really becoming the heart of our midfield

 

Bain, Gamboa, Hendry, Allan, Christie and Hayes (four of whom were signed by Rodgers) were all available for selection today.

They have 78 international caps and 1,189 senior appearances in domestic and European competition between them; they have won a multitude of individual and team honours.

If they cannot be trusted to play against a Premiership side that has just gained back-to-back promotions, then why are they on our books?

We should not need to start a match-fit, first-choice central midfielder in the first league game of the season (against a club that was playing in League One two seasons ago), four days before the first leg of a vital Champions League Third Qualifying Round tie, when our squad is already stretched to its limit.

Among our squad players, we had a central midfielder who has acquitted himself well whenever called upon, whom our current manager reportedly signed for £3m; he sat on the bench for the duration of today’s match.

In that situation, common sense should dictate that we try to minismise the risk of injury to as many match-fit, first-choice players as we can, while fielding a team well capable of winning.

 

If you consider Gordon a difference-maker at Champions League level, yes; if not, no.

Cool.

 

Minimize the risk on a player that’s played like 5 games since having a month off and has no previous injury issues? So basically you think our entire first team should be rested on the first league game of the season?

 

A joy to watch. Hopefully nothing too serious.

 

We were playing a newly promoted, relegation fodder, Kenny Miller managed, livingston. What would be wrong with resting a few players when we could have probably won this game with 11 youth players on the park and have season defining qualifiers coming up? Compared to the qualifiers this game meant nothing.

All it takes is for a * like miller to instruct his team to start taking bodies and we're going into the AEK game with Calvin Miller at Lb.

 

It has nothing to do with the number of games that we have played so far or our players’ injury history. A knock, for example, can occur at any time.

As I said above, I think that match-fit, first-choice players should be rested ahead of season-defining fixtures where possible.

A side like the one below should have been strong enough beat Livingston at Celtic Park:

Bain
Lustig Hendry Šimunović Hayes
Christie Allan Eboué Rogić Sinclair
Griffiths
​

Hazard
Gamboa
Ralston
Miller
Benyu
Henderson
Johnston

That would have minimised the risk of injury to eight potential match winners (Gordon, Ajer, Forrest, Ntcham, Brown, McGregor, Tierney and Édouard) ahead of vital Champions League qualifiers.

 

Rogic will take his place. Can't really complain at that boy who also has magic feet.

 

Some people will argue about anything

 

Squad rotation is not a whacky idea.

 

The thing that was stupid was the fact he was still on the pitch after getting injured for 5-10 mins hobbling around with players still passing him the ball!

He should have been straight off the pitch up the tunnel getting assessed.