Scotland v Serbia: Back-to-back qualifiers a problem for injured Scott Brown

The Celtic manager was more optimistic about Brown yesterday than he had been at the weekend but warned that the player’s degenerative hip condition will continue to make it difficult for him to play consecutive games at the weekend and in midweek. And, with eight of Scotland’s ten qualifying matches being played in pairs, it remains probable that Craig Levein will be able to call on his most dynamic midfielder for only a minority of those matches.

Brown has been omitted from Levein’s squad for the first two qualifiers, against Serbia on Saturday and Macedonia three days later. He is unable to train at present because of the hip condition, and last week Lennon suggested his appearances at club level could be limited to key games. But, while continuing to emphasise the severity of the player’s condition, Lennon suggested yesterday that, with patience and careful management, Brown would at least have a chance of being included in the squad for next month’s matches – in Wales on 12 October then in Belgium four days later.

“We’ll just have to see,” Lennon said. “We’ll just have to manage him game by game, week by week – that’s the way we’re looking at it.

“This isn’t a club versus country thing. He wants to play for Scotland. He’s disappointed to miss out on these games but, for me, if he could have played the Serbia game, there’s no way he could have got through the  Macedonia game.

“Hopefully, he’ll be able to manage it better come the next qualifiers. Two games a week would be a problem. We’ll have to sit down and talk about it.

“We have seven games in 23 days when we start back and Scott won’t play in the majority of those. It’s how we prioritise and how Scott is feeling – what his state of mind is.”

Brown played in last week’s Champions League play-off win over Helsingborgs after taking an injection, which was a course of action Lennon said Celtic did not want to take too often. “It’s corrective surgery that’s needed. It is a degenerative problem so he might need to go in, get it cleaned up and then shut down for a spell. He’s not training at the minute. It’s just light stuff and rest. It’s not career-threatening but it’s something we want to avoid at this time if we can, in terms of the surgery.

“He didn’t train on the Tuesday and we gave him an injection before the game. He was able to get through it, but it’s not ideal. We don’t want to inject him before games. If we can slow him down during the week, he should be okay to play in the majority of the games.”

One problematic aspect of Brown’s recovery is his own  eagerness to do as much as possible – something which medical staff at Celtic Park have warned him against.

“With something like this, the physio is telling me he just needs rest,” Lennon explained. “We need to take it game by game, and week by week. Scott doesn’t like that, but he has to be realistic about it. He wants to train and he will train, but we just need to temper the training  regime. Scott knows that. He very nearly missed the Helsingborgs home game – just because he wanted to train.

“He was rested for the Inverness match, but did a bit on the Sunday and then on the  Monday. That’s when he came in and said ‘I think I’m in a bit of trouble again’. Alarm bells start ringing again when he tells  you that.”