Predicted Celtic team vs St Johnstone: 1 change as Rodgers makes bold selection by dropping resurgent star

Celtic are chalking off the games one by one as they close in on retaining the Scottish Premiership title and Brendan Rodgers is warning his players to keep their foot firmly on the pedal until they’ve crossed the winning line.

The Hoops boss takes his side to McDiarmid Park on Sunday afternoon to face St Johnstone who sit bottom of the league table and in desperate need of points to avoid relegation from the top-flight.

Rodgers’ men responded well from their Old Firm defeat to Rangers before the international break with a no-nonsense 3-0 victory over Hearts last weekend and one more slip up for their Glasgow rivals could be enough to ensure the Parkhead club clinch four-in-a-row and move them on to the brink of another domestic Treble.

Rodgers could decide to tinker with his starting line-up in Perth with fit-again central defenders Auston Trusty and Liam Scales returning from recent knocks that prevented them from heading off to represent their countries last month. Trusty had been a mainstay in the team alongside Cameron Carter-Vickers since the turn of the year and could be in line to reclaim his place in the XI with Maik Nawrocki dropping to the bench.

That decision would be rather harsh on the Polish ace considering he has stepped up to the mark in recent games after being brought back in from the cold by Rodgers, but it’s likely that with some massive games coming up Rodgers could revert to players he trusts and Nawrocki has been a fringe players throughout the Northern Irishman’s second spell in Glasgow.

“Yes, that’s the mentality,” Rodgers admitted in his pre-match media conference when asked if his side’s mindset is to keep their foot down on the pedal until they cross the finish line. “I think we had a really good response last week. I felt our game was at a really good level against a good Hearts team that have been consistently doing really well over the last number of months.

“Again, we’ve come up in the last number of weeks with a few systems that have been different to what we’ve come up against before. We had to try and figure that out against a good team because they played the same as Rangers. With some time on the training field, we were able to figure that out and work it well.

“Play with the speed, play with the mobility, the rotation, the technique that we wanted in the game and scored three fantastic goals. We want to keep delivering a level of performance. Like i say, the finish line is in the distance for all teams with the games, but for us, we know where we want to be at the end of the season. Each game now, that’s what our focus is on.”

Predicted Celtic XI vs St Johnstone

Viljami Sinisalo, Alistair Johnston, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Auston Trusty, Jeffrey Schlupp; Callum McGregor, Arne Engels, Reo Hatate; Nicolas Kuhn, Jota, Daizen Maeda.

SUBS: Scott Bain (GK), Greg Taylor, Adam Idah, Yang Hyun-jun, Luke McCowan, Maik Nawrocki, Paulo Bernardo, James Forrest, Anthony Ralston.