Celtic boss Neil Lennon will rest five key players for this weekend's league meeting with Ross County.
The Hoops, already crowned Scottish champions, lost 3-1 to Motherwell last week after Lennon rested Efe Ambrose, Kris Commons and Joe Ledley and he will perform a similar selection act in order to keep his star players fresh for the Scottish Cup final with Hibernian on May 26.
"Charlie (Mulgrew), Sammy (Georgios Samaras), Gary (Hooper), Emilio (Izaguirre) and Fraser (Forster) will all be getting a break as they won't be getting an opportunity later on and we feel this is the best thing to do for them come the start of pre-season," he told Celtic View.
"We are sacrificing a couple of games now with forward planning, one, for the cup final and, two, for close season and pre-season.
"We are the champions and must not forget that. The league is done and dusted. You don't like losing games but we have to give the squad players an opportunity now that the main games are over.
"I want to play some of them and give them some game time and rest the guys who have played a lot of games.
"There are squad places up for grabs in the cup final and it's healthy to have this competition."
