Neil Lennon insists taking his Celtic players away for a warm weather training camp in January is crucial to ensuring his squad can last the full campaign after a scheduling row over their Premiership clash with Hibs.
Easter Road chief executive Leeann Dempster was left "fizzing" over an SPFL decision to push back the January 9 meeting between the sides to a Monday night kick off 52 hours later despite the capital outfit rejecting the Parkhead side's proposal.
It later emerged Celtic had asked for the game to be rescheduled in order to allow the Premiership champions to embark on a winter training programme days after their second Old Firm clash of the campaign at Ibrox on January 2.
That would be game number nine of a hectic festive period for Lennon's side - starting with Thursday's Europa League meeting in Milan.
However, the prospect has also been raised of adding a tenth game to an already heavy schedule as SPFL bosses look to play out the season to a finish.
Aberdeen and Celtic's coronavirus-induced hiatuses earlier in the season mean they have a game in hand to face each other and with both now out of the Betfred Cup, it has been suggested they could face off at Celtic Park in the week of the quarter-finals in that competition.
But Lennon is cautious about the impact on his players ahead of a hectic four-week period.
He said: “There are a lot of games and it will be good, again, for the players to get a change of scenery after that.
“But, yeah, we are looking to just go away for five or six days for a bit of winter training.
“It’s not a winter break, but, hopefully, we can get some benefit from that.”
St Johnstone arrive at Parkhead on Sunday before the side end their miserable Europa League campaign at home to Lille next week.
Kilmarnock are next to visit Glasgow's east end that Sunday and then it is on to Hampden for Lennon's men for a Scottish Cup final date with Hearts.
A trip to Hamilton is sandwiched in between Betfred Cup conquerers Ross County and newly-promoted Dundee United coming to Celtic Park in a frenetic seven day period before the end of the year.
Ibrox beckons on January 2 and while Lennon admits the Aberdeen fixture does need to be fitted in to their calendar somewhere, he questioned whether the December-January period was the right time to do so.
He said: “We would like to get the games played, but I think just at this stage with the amount of games we have adding another one to the calendar would probably be too much of an ask for the players.”
