Hearts are the visitors to Celtic Park today and as manager Mowbray prepares to meet the Edinburgh side he conceded that the squad he has to choose from today will look very different this time next year. The Celtic boss wants to build his own team with players of his own choice and if that means shipping out some of his more established stars then that is a route he's prepared to go down. "I'm miles away from where I want this club to be." said Mowbray. " I want us to be in a position when people will struggle to say we have a weakened team, and we have got to get to that."
"We need a squad where all those in the 20 are top players." he said. "Where, for instance, if Scott Brown is dropped, he is replaced by another top player. I inherited a squad which has won championships, but lost Shunsuke Nakamura and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, but I see my team developing style."
"However, the type of football I want will need us to go through a few transfer windows." said the manager. "Until the team is playing the way I want it to, with the type of players I like. By the time the next transfer window comes, I'll know all I want to know about the players here and who I want to keep."
"Tel Aviv was a classic case of that not being a Celtic team that I would want to stick a stamp on and say 'that's how I want to play football'. " said Mowbray. "Our ball retention wasn't good enough. At European level if you keep giving the ball away you're going to get hurt. At this club, week in, week out I'd like to control football matches better than we can at the moment. It's something that we'll get to in the end.
Mowbray is set to make changes today against Hearts "I'll look at the players available to face Hearts who are ready physically and psychologically to go out and win the match," said the Celtic manager. "But I'll pick the team with half an eye on the Falkirk match on Wednesday and the next game, too. I know there are some players who will think they have been dropped, but I can't spend my whole life trying to explain things."