Hoops trio back

Celtic will have Artur Boruc, Shunsuke Nakamura and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink available as they continue their pre-season campaign in Portugal.

The internationals have trained with their Celtic team-mates after missing the team’s first two pre-season games.

The trio were given extra time off following their commitments over the summer, with Poland goalkeeper Boruc and Holland striker Vennegoor of Hesselink playing at Euro 2008.

They will now be available for Celtic’s Algarve Cup games against Middlesbrough tomorrow night and Cardiff on Thursday, plus the friendly against Porto on Saturday.

Australia striker Scott McDonald, like Japanese midfielder Nakamura, played in World Cup qualifiers in June but opted to begin training with the bulk of the squad.

McDonald lined up in two weekend friendlies in the south of England, which produced mixed results for Gordon Strachan’s men.

The Clydesdale Bank Premier League side beat Southampton 2-0 on Friday night but lost 3-1 to Fulham the following day.

Despite making just one change to his second starting line-up inside 24 hours, Strachan expected more from his team.

He accused them of having “lazy minds” during the first 20 minutes of the game after Celtic fell behind to an Erik Nevland goal inside two minutes.

Barry Robson pulled one back just before the break following Bobby Zamora’s debut strike but Leon Andreasen killed off the contest with five minutes left.

And full-back Paul Caddis, who came on as a second-half substitute, admits Strachan and his team-mates will not settle for a repeat of the Craven Cottage performance.

“Fulham were a good side,” the 20-year-old said. “They struggled to stay up last season so they just showed us the quality of the Premiership.

“The most important thing in these pre-season games is to get our match fitness up as we prepare to launch our defence of the SPL title in a few weeks.

“But you ask any player at Celtic and they will tell you the same thing. They want to win. So does the boss. We set out to win every game that we play in.

“Losing like we did to Fulham wasn’t good enough and we’ll be looking to improve the standard of our play in the matches we have coming up before the season kicks off next month.”

Ben Hutchinson and Paddy McCourt will sit out tomorrow night’s game against Middlesbrough through injury, while Chris Killen has joined up with New Zealand’s Olympic squad.