Ange Postecoglou has confirmed that Jota is back in training but won’t feature against Motherwell in the Premier Sports Cup.
The Portuguese winger was forced to sit out Celtic 's 6-1 hammering of Hibs at Parkhead on Saturday after missing the home defeat to RB Leipzig in the Champions League. Postecoglou was hopeful that Jota would be back training at the start of this week and this has proved to be the case. But he won’t be thrown back into the squad for the trip to Fir Park. David Turnbull is also close to a return but won’t be risked either against his former club, and availability is going to be similar to what it was at the weekend.
“Jota’s progressing, He’s out training but he won’t be right for tomorrow. From the weekend, it will pretty much be as is. The ones closest to coming back at Jota and Turnbull but they'll miss tomorrow and we’ll just see about the weekend. Obviously Cal [Callum McGregor] and Carl [Starfelt] are still weeks away.”
Postecoglou also outlined his plans for during the World Cup break. Some of his squad will be jetting off to Qatar to represent their countries. Those left behind will jet off to his homeland for the Sydney Super Cup before a week of warm weather training closer to home on the continent.
But the Aussie admitted that he can only work with what he knows so far. International selections will throw up some unknowns. But it’s something they've tried to plan for as much as possible.
“It’s been part of our planning from pre-season,” he explained. “You work with the things that are known. Those are that we’re going on a trip to Australia straight after the last game for a week to play a couple of games there.
“The players will have a sort of mini break for about a week or so, then we head to Portugal for a camp before the resumption. Those are the knowns.
“The unknowns are we’ll see which players end up going to the World Cup and where they are physically. We’re going to have individualised programmes for some of them. If they've gone to the World Cup, when do we give them a break what sort of time off we give them.”
Motherwell stand between Celtic and a return to Hampden in on Wednesday night. This trophy was the first Postecoglou got his hands on last season, but warned that Stevie Hammell’s men could throw the shackles off in a different competition.
He added: "There are always teams that go on cup runs, sometimes belying their league form," said the Hoops boss. "Cup competitions sometimes free teams up a bit and give them licence to be a bit more aggressive in their approach. From our perspective it's about playing our football because we know that when we play well, we're hard to stop."
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