We know what song Anthony Stokes is going to be singing for much of Christmas.
The Celtic striker has put down a fairly tough week at work after going on a massive Twitter rant last weekend, and then being locked out of the club’s training ground.
The 27-year-old tore into Ronny Delia after being dropped from the first-team squad for the trip to Inverness. He did apologise afterwards but the player was banned from the training ground for his actions.
Many felt the punishment handed down was excessive, but today Celtic boss Ronny Delia admitted that the Dubliner was not just banned for his social media outburst.
“I think everybody understands it’s not about that single incident. There have been some issues in the past and now we felt we had to put down a marker.”
“I think that’s going to be good in the end for us and Anthony as well. After 14 days he will come back and hopefully we can keep him working.”
“I wouldn’t go into the different issues, that’s between me and him and the club.”
Stokes’ career at the club has been called into question since last weekend, but the Norwegian thinks the striker still has a future with the Scottish Premiership champions.
“He has a future. Of course there are things that need to improve. If he makes the improvement that we want, everything is possible.”
“If he didn’t have any ability, he wouldn’t be here. He’s a goalscorer and a great player.
“Everybody at this club gets a lot of chances but we need to see improvement in different aspects and if they don’t do that individually then we need to use different things to get through to them.”
