Celtic manager Wilfried Nancy has confirmed that Nigerian forward Kelechi Iheanacho is back in contention to play after spending a few weeks on the sidelines with injury.
The Super Eagles forward joined the club in the summer from Sevilla and immediately became an important member under Brendan Rodgers.
The 29-year-old suffered an injury after just four minutes in Celtic’s 2-1 win over Sturm Graz in the UEFA Europa League in October, which has sidelined him since.
He recently returned to training and was included in the squad for the Hoops defeat to Hearts in the Scottish league last weekend.
“He has trained well. After that, he needs minutes. It has been a long time, two months since he really played”, Nancy stated.
“The way we work the players who have not played regularly we try to get them through physical work to get back into the rhythm. For the moment obviously he is not fit to play a lot of minutes but a few minutes, yes.”
Iheanacho was included in Eric Chelle’s preliminary squad for the African Cup of Nations in Morocco later this month, but is in a race against time to make the final squad.
He is however expected to play a part in Celtic’s clash against Italian side AS Roma later on Thursday, as they continue their chase for the knockout rounds of the competition.
“I have to understand that also in the past they did not rotate much. So I have done my work on that. I believe we have the players to do that but it has to be step by step”, the former Columbus Crew manager continued.
Celtic welcome AS Roma to the Celtic Park in Wilfried Nancy first European game in charge, hoping to put behind their last weekend’s disappointment.
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