Big guns can help Euro bid
Astana had the weekend off to prepare for a Champions League battle with Celtic – but Chris Davies insists the Hoops’ high- prof i le friendlies are better prep than a sofa Saturday.
Celtic will fly out to Kazakhstan tomorrow morning, just 36 hours on from facing English champs Leciester.
And ahead of the return leg, Brendan Rodgers is taking his side to Dublin on Friday to take on Barcelona.
But Parkhead assistant boss Davies said: “We’ll plan for that. We will make sure the minutes each player plays prepares us perfectly for each midweek game. “Will that mean a lot of substitutes? Possibly.
“I don’t think mentally it’s a problem though. We want to have a good game and enjoy it. We want to play and measure ourselves against that level of opponent.
“We are not seeing it as something that is draining or anything like that.
“We are going to enjoy the
friendly games and take from them what we can – tactically and physically – to help us in a positive way for European games.”
Davies is renowned in the art of opposit ion analysis, having done the job for Rodgers at Swansea and Liverpool.
And he revealed they’re well into their preparation for the Kazakh champs.
He said: “Astana are a step up in terms of opposition. In the Champions League last year they didn’t lose at home to Atletico Madrid, Benfica or Galatasaray.
“We don’t know a lot about the Kazakhstan league and what level it comes in at – but we know what you have to do to get results in the Champions League. “So we know they’ll be a decent team. We’ve got a comprehensive process that we’ l l go through when analysing the opposition and we’ll make it as thorough as we can to make sure we’re ready for what’s coming.
“We had John McGlynn out watching them and we’ve the technology and resources to analyse every aspect of all their games.”