Add to Preferred Sources Martin O’Neill has spoken to the media ahead of Celtic’s clash with Ferencvaros.
The Celtic boss has made four changes from the team which lost heavily at Ibrox over the weekend, including a handing a first start of the season to James Forrest.
The winger has joined an attack which also includes Haissem Hassan and Camilo Duran, completely reshuffled from the forward line from the Derby.
O’Neill described looking for balance in the team and handing out deserved starts.
Martin O’Neill on Celtic team vs Ferencvaros: ‘A couple of things we’ve done’
Speaking to CelticPlayer, O’Neill said when asked about his team selection: “In terms of balancing, I think one or two players…
“James [Forrest] starts tonight, I think in terms of an impact player, he’s been terrific in that time.
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“Here, he’s now given a chance to start a game. Will he last the match? I don’t know, at 35 years of age. Whatever the case may be. But he’s been a great player.
“But a couple of things we’ve done tonight, I think there’s a couple of players who deserve to start tonight, James being one of them.
“Let’s see how it goes.”
On whether or not he expected his team to have extra motivation due to last weekend’s result, he continued: “Yeah, of course.
“It’s the start of the Europa League, we’ve got some home games to start with. Three out of the first four.
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“Really, it’s with the home form that you have to try and be as strong as possible.
“I came in last season when some of the home form might not have been as strong as that. We had a lot of away games to deal with.
“Those were difficult, I must admit, even though we got some decent results in Feyenoord and Bologna.
“But overall, here, it’s the start of a new competition tonight. Try and win it. I think there’s always an extra incentive when you’ve lost the game beforehand.”
On the challenge posed by Ferencvaros, he finally concluded: “I think they’ll come here, I think they’ll try and take the sting out of the game early on.
“I think they’ve got very very good technical players who, after the hectic opening that you hope to have, when the game’s settled down, sometimes those players with the really good technique come to the fore.
“So it’s a concern tonight, but I’m always concerned about the games.”
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