NEIL LENNON looked at the positives after last night’s goalless deadlock with Swiss side St Gallen.
The scoreless encounter brought down the curtain on the three-game pre-season preparation that saw two wins in Austria before the stalemate in Switzerland.
Celtic now face a sweat over Jozo Simunovic following his red card 15 minutes from time. It will depend on the referee’s report if the Croatian defender is banned or not.
The Hoops will fly back to Glasgow today and then the focus will be on Tuesday’s trip to Bosnia and the Champions League opening qualifier against FK Sarajevo.
Mikey Johnston took his opportunity to impress the Parkhead gaffer in a work-out that saw Odsonne Edouard miss a first-half penalty-kick.
Lennon, speaking to Celtic TV, said: “It was a tough test considering the majority of them have only had 45 minutes of football.
”It was a real step up in quality and in the tempo of the game. I’m really pleased we’ve come through it unscathed.
“We had good chances to win the game and we ran out of steam towards the end. That’s completely understandable. We had really good chances with the penalty and Mikey. Marion (Shved) had a really good chance in the first-half. Jonny (Hayes) should have done better with the cut-back for Mikey, so we could have had two or three.
“Overall, there’s still a bit of rust, but Mikey was excellent at times. He’s really knocking on the door for a regular place.”
The Irishman added: “We used half the squad for the bounce game earlier and then the other half in the evening to make sure we got enough minutes in the game.
“If we used the whole squad in this game they’d only have got 15 minutes here and 20 minutes there. That’s not enough going into an important week.
“You could see the fatigue kicking in towards the end of the game. They got 90 minutes in their legs which is important and they will benefit from that going into Sarajevo next week.”
Earlier in the day, a Hoops line-up routed a St Gallen Under-21 team 9-1 in a one-sided confrontation.
Leigh Griffiths claimed four goals, Scott Sinclair chipped in with two and there were singles from Ewan Henderson, Lewis Morgan and Karamoko Dembele.
