NEIL LENNON admits he is hugely worried about the risk of his players contracting Coronavirus when away on international duty next week, and has revealed that Celtic are considering alternative travel arrangements for members of their squad who are called up for their country.
Celtic were among the hardest hit by the impact of Covid-19 infections after the last international fixtures, with Odsonne Edouard, Hatem Elhamed and Nir Bitton all testing positive for the virus and Ryan Christie being forced to self-isolate.
That meant those players were missing as Celtic lost to Rangers and AC Milan before drawing with Aberdeen. Edouard, Bitton and Christie returned to action against Lille on Thursday night, but with Celtic now only just getting back to full strength, Lennon fears further setbacks after the next international break.
"It's a major concern when they go away again,” Lennon said. “We've been pretty stringent inside our own bubble and have had no positive tests for a long, long time.
"It's difficult. We can parley with the associations and say, 'can you give us a bit of leeway here?'. “Whether that falls on deaf ears is another thing but there's no doubt that the damage that was done, losing four players, through no fault of our own, was difficult to take.
“Slowly but surely we are getting them back but you can see even in the throes of the game they are not fully match fit. Maybe the virus can take more out of you than you first thought.
“Bitton did fine for the half-hour [against Lille], Odsonne came through it okay, so hopefully these boys and Ryan, who had two weeks in a room on his own, hopefully they will get stronger as we go along.”
Lennon says that Celtic may even look to lay on private jets for some of their players when they go to play for their countries.
“It’s something we can look at,” he said.
“With (Vasilis) Barkas, they were going to shut the airport in Greece because they had a strike over there, and we got him back on a private plane.
“It’s not ideal, but it’s something we can look at. It’s a big undertaking when you’ve got maybe 15 or 16 players away, but we desperately want to avoid a repeat of what happened the last time.”
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