WeKnowSFA

20th Mar2010

St Johnstone missing a dirty dozen at Parkhead

by WeKnowSFA

Derek McInnes has to cobble a team together

Going to Celtic Park isn’t the best of trips for a lot of clubs and with Robbie Keane finding his feet in Scotland, it is easy to see that some managers have a lot to contend with when choosing their team.

St Johnstone boss Derek McInnes may have a lot to wrestle with today as he could be without up to 12 players at Parkhead today. The following players have supposedly all been ruled out:

Martin Hardie, Kevin Rutkiewicz, Stuart McCaffrey, Steven Anderson, Graham Gartland, Kevin Moon, Murray Davidson, Peter MacDonald, Andy Jackson and Collin Samuel.

When you add in Cillian Sheridan who is unable to play against Celtic and serious doubts over Stevie Milne, this over a full team unavailable to the Perth side. This would be harsh for any side but St Johnstone have been on a good run of late.

The club are very much in the mix to make a top six finish and still have a number of games in hand over Hearts. The Edinburgh club play at 1230 today against Hibs at Tynecastle so the Perth club will know where they lie before they kick off at Celtic Park.

St Johnstone have suffered two heavy defeats against Celtic this season but the Perth club will point to circumstances to explain their 4-1 defeat at home to Celtic. A red card at the start of the second half allowed for wave after wave of Celtic attacks. Even then, it took a further twenty minutes for the Glasgow side to make their breakthrough.

So, reasons for St Johnstone to still be optimistic, can their patched up side cause a shock today?