BRENDAN RODGERS, whose Celtic side are now just one game away from winning a domestic treble after an impressive 2-0 win over Rangers in the William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final, last night admitted that Moussa Dembele is a serious doubt for the final.
Dembele, the leading scorer in Scotland this season with 32 goals to his name, limped off after 27 minutes of the last-four match at Hampden yesterday after suffering a suspected hamstring strain when he was backheeling the ball.
The 21-year-old, who had set up his team mate Callum McGregor for the opening goal, went to hospital for a scan and medical staff at Parkhead will examine the extent of the injury when they receive the results today.
However, Rodgers, whose side has already won the Betfred Cup and the Ladbrokes Premiership in the 2016/17 campaign, envisages that the French forward could be struggling to make the final against Aberdeen on Saturday, May 27.
Asked if Dembele would be available for the meeting with Derek McInnes’s team next month, Rodgers replied: “We’ll see. It looks like a hamstring. If it’s a full blown hamstring then he probably wouldn’t be. We’ll see. It is still late April so that’s not until May time. We’ll see what the scan brings.”
The injury was the only negative for Celtic on an afternoon when they once again underlined their superiority over Rangers with a dominant performance. McGregor put them in front early on befre Scott Sinclair made sure of their progress when he scored a penalty in the second half.
However, Rodgers was at pains to stress afterwards that Aberdeen, the second-placed Premiership side who had ran out narrow 3-2 winners over defending champions Hibernian on Saturday, would be difficult final opponents. “It will be a really good game,” he said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel