Ange Postecoglou insists Kyogo Furuhashi hasn’t been ruled out of Sunday’s League Cup Final – and the Japanese star could even make a shock appearance against Motherwell on Sunday afternoon.
The Celtic striker was feared to be out for weeks after injuring his hamstring in the 3-2 Europa League win over Real Betis on Thursday night.
But Hoops boss Postecoglou admitted early signs are that Kyogo’s injury is not as serious as first feared as he waits on scan results to reveal the full extent of his star man’s strain.
And the Aussie will be hoping for good news after the gamble of throwing the striker into the fray as a sub against Betis backfired when he limped off clutching his leg.
Kyogo had replaced Albian Ajeti, who suffered the same injury after 30 minutes, but then had to go off with 20 minutes left.
Postecoglou’s initial prognosis was "not good".
But now, with a Hampden appearance and a first chance of silverware against Hibs looming next weekend and a trip to face Ross County in Dingwall on Wednesday, he admitted things are looking up.
The Hoops boss said: “He’ll get scanned today (Saturday) and I don’t want to put a time frame on it.
“We don’t think it is anything serious but as to whether he will be available for Sunday, we probably won’t know until tomorrow.
“I’ll make a decision then but nothing is confirmed.”
Postecoglou also believes identical injuries to Kyogo, Jota and Ajeti are just part of the collateral damage from his coaching methods, which come with high risk attached.
He said: “It’s not a concern. It’s obviously something we want to get on top of but it’s not new to me either.
“The way we play – and at the clubs I’ve been at – I kind of understand that the beginnings are always difficult.
“We play differently and train differently so it takes players time to adjust to that and along the way we obviously pay a price.
“People forget that a lot of these guys didn’t do a pre-season with us and came in late so we’ve been playing catch up the whole way through.
“But the one thing I’ve never done, and I won’t do in my whole career, is compromise the football team we want to be because we are not quite ready to be there.
“I’d rather keep going at the pace we are going and it means we are going to have some casualties along the way and lose a few. But I still think, for us as a football team and club as we try to grow to be a certain type of side that plays a certain brand of football, it is just part of the process.
“We’ll get better at making sure our players don’t pick up these kinds of injuries, though the fixture scheduling makes it even more challenging.
“It is stuff we need to deal with and we will but we won’t compromise, and I won’t compromise, on the football we play, or the way we train. That’s because I know in the long-term that it’s going to give us the success we need.”
Meanwhile, Postecoglou insists he has no regrets over Celtic’s gung-ho Europa League approach.
The Hoops boss believes his side have shown over recent months that their attacking philosophy is paying off with their 13 goals bettered by only three teams in the group stage.
With Motherwell arriving at Parkhead today, the Celtic boss is convinced their European exertions is clear proof of the progress being made under his charge.
He said: “I think we’ve made progress as the games have gone on and the pleasing thing for me is that we made a decision to tackle these games a certain way, irrespective of the opponents.
“My view was let’s go out there and test ourselves against the very best and if we fall short at least we know the areas we need to improve.
“We’ve done that every game, we have scored goals, created chances against the very best and defensively we have slowly improved.
“That has been the ultimate measure for us and while we are disappointed not to go through, to win three games in a difficult group and score goals means we have made progress.”
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