Mowbray tempted to play Fortune in Hamburg

Published on Wednesday 4 November 2009 21:54

TONY Mowbray is considering starting fit-again Marc-Antoine Fortune in tonight's crucial Europa League Group C clash with Hamburg.

The 3.8 million summer signing came on as a second- half substitute during Saturday's 3-0 SPL win over Kilmarnock, his first action since injuring his knee back in August, in a season curtain-raiser against Arsenal.

Sitting at the bottom of Europa League Group C with just one point from three games, Celtic need a victory tonight to have a realistic chance of qualifying for the knockout phase.

Consequently, Celtic manager Mowbray will have to decide whether former Nancy striker Fortune is worth risking.

"Marco is fit and ready," said Mowbray. "He's been out for nine weeks and got 20 minutes or half an hour the other day. Am I tempted to play him? Yes.

"The more high-quality players on the pitch, the better it is, but we have some strikers who will be bursting to score. So we will wait and see what we decide."

Mowbray refused to accept the win-or-bust scenario his side find themselves in with three games remaining in the group. Celtic have lost games against Hapoel Tel Aviv and Hamburg, and drew with Rapid Vienna.

He said: "Win or bust? As I said before, I wouldn't talk about win-or-bust games.

"It's a game where we have to be conscious of the quality of the opposition, of course. But we will try to win as we try to win every football match.

"We will be as positive as we can and try and get a positive result and see where we go from there."

As expected, midfielders Scott Brown and Shaun Maloney did not travel to Germany when the Celtic squad departed Glasgow yesterday.

Brown is still troubled by an ankle injury while Maloney is out with tendonitis.