Liam Scales insists the Celtic squad will rally around Auston Trusty after the USA ace’s family heartache. Trusty has been given a leave of absence following the death of his father after a period of illness. And Scales has told the defender his teammates will be there for him when he gets back down to business.
Scales: We'll Be There for Trusty
The Ireland star said: “Yeah, 100 percent. All of us. We haven't seen him obviously, but I think when we do we're going to have to get around him as well. It’s a horrible time for him. It's bigger than football. I know that's hard to appreciate sometimes, but he needs to take as long as he needs to, to do what he has to do. Once he's back, he’ll have the full support of all the boys because it's tough for anyone to go through that. We need to rally around him and really help him through.”
“I do get that maybe, you know, we're seen as footballers but we go through the same sort of things in life that the fans go through. It's obviously tough for him right now, but, you know, once he's back we will be there for him.”
Euro Form Concerns
Trusty missed Thursday’s Europa League defeat to Celta Vigo and is unlikely to be involved against Hibs tomorrow. The Hoops are looking to bounce back but Scales admitted the new-look side need to sort out their Euro form after racking up a third defeat on the spin.
He said: “I think it is difficult for players to come in and get a feel of the size of the club and the expectations. It doesn't matter who you're playing against, you’re expected to win every single week, and that's not the case at many clubs. So I think it does take people a little while to get used to that. But I think the lads, the new lads, have been really, really good. It's just a case of kind of getting everybody in right all together at the same time and just all click quite early.”
Looking Ahead to Hibs
“We obviously had a tough game. We felt at stages, like we felt like we had a decent first half and we didn't give up many chances. We had a few, a couple of half-chances ourselves, and then going 1-0 ahead, we probably thought we had a chance to win the game. Then it turned so quickly. It was a difficult one to take. But yeah, we have to just quickly get our heads on, be back in training on Saturday, and fully focus on Hibs.”
Celts flipped the switch to recover from the battering by Benfica to hammer Hearts last weekend and Scales wants a similar reaction at Easter Road. He said: “Obviously, we approach games differently, tactically and technically, but the mentality is always the same, that we're 100 percent focused on the game right now. That's what's so important, because we can't think beyond Hibs now, we can't think about previous games. We just need to really flip that switch and be fully focused on Hibs.”
“Once you are in that routine, it's easy to kind of maintain that sort of mindset. You think sort of have a feeling of maybe things aren't going so well, and rightly so, we've lost big games, we haven't won in Europe. It’s not ideal, and we want to be better. But I think domestically in the league, we have been generally quite good. We need to keep doing that, and hopefully we can build around Europe, and obviously when the cup comes around next year.”
“The league's obviously a priority, and it's good to be top of the league at this stage, and performing well. We need to be maintaining that now because it's massive.”
