BRENDAN Rodgers has admitted he would like to tie Dedryck Boyata down on a new contract at Celtic and boost his chances of being involved with Belgium at Russia 2018.
Boyata, who has been sidelined with a knee injury since the pre-season friendly against Slavia Prague in July, is set to return in the Betfred Cup quarter-final against Dundee at Dens Park tomorrow evening.
Rodgers stressed the centre back, who was a first team regular as the Parkhead club went undefeated domestically last term, would have to be eased back in.
However, he revealed he is keen for the 26-year-old, whose current deal with the Scottish champions expires in the summer, to extend his stay and travel with his country to the World Cup finals.
“He’s been back working hard in training for a few weeks, the next step for him is to get game time,” said Rodgers.
“I’m not so sure he can come in and play three games in a row. It’s more the confidence around the knee you are judging. It’s about managing it. But he’s certainly ready to be introduced.
“It’s nice to have him back. Since the turn of the year and the trip to Dubai he has been brilliant with me. The bit of sun did him the world of good. He was great that week in training and was outstanding the rest of the season.
“It’s a big year for him with Belgium and the World Cup coming up. We want to build him up and help him be involved in that. I always like to have a centre half with real speed.
“He’s certainly one I’ll be looking to keep so that’s something we’ll be looking at.”
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 here