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The National (Scotland)
The National (Scotland)
Sport
Joe Donnelly

The four notable Celtic absentees in Queen's Park friendly

Celtic overcame Queen's Park 6-4 last night in an entertaining pre-season friendly at The City Stadium (formerly Lesser Hampden).

First-team stalwarts Matt O'Riley and Kyogo Furuhashi featured in Brendan Rodgers' starting XI – with the former donning the captain's armband and the latter netting a hat-trick before being substituted just over the hour.

Besides third-choice goalkeeper Tobi Oluwayemi, every one of Celtic's substitutes came off the bench over the course of 90 minutes, with Oh, Frame, Agbaire, Robertson, Dede, Ure, Donovan, Turley, Siegrist, Kwon and Hatton all featuring in some capacity.

Celtic's Scotland contingent are yet to return following their participation in Euro 2024, while Alistair Johnston and Cameron Carter-Vickers are still on leave with the Canada and United States of America national squads respectively.


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One player who is back training at the club's Lennoxtown Training Centre is Luis Palma, who featured prominently in the club's latest 'Inside Lennoxtown' short showcasing the squad hard at work in pre-season drills.

The 24-year-old Honduran did not play against Queen's Park last night, nor did he feature against Ayr United last Friday.

Similarly, both Daizen Maeda and Reo Hatate featured in the same Inside Lennoxtown training video, however both players were not part of the manager's matchday squad against Queen's.

The fourth notable player absent from Celtic's pre-season endeavours so far is Daniel Kelly.

Kelly, a long-serving product of the club's youth academy, has featured several times for the Celtic first-team and has been publicly lauded by manager Brendan Rodgers.

It's understood the 18-year-old is in the midst of contract negotiations – his current contract expires at the end of 2024 – with transfer guru Fabrizio Romano even posting about the young talent earlier this week.

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