After the 3-0 win against Raith Rovers tonight Ange Postecoglou, in his post match interview, confirmed the reason we didn’t get to see our new striker Giorgos Giakoumakis take the field was due to a calf injury picked up in the warm up. According to Ange Celtic have already sent the striker off to get a scan to reveal the extent of the injury.
This is a hugely unfortunate incident to happen at probably the worst possible time for both Celtic and the player. In Celtic’s case we are already short on strikers due to the knee injury sustained by our new fan favourite Kyogo Furuhashi on international duty for Japan against China.
On top of this we have an intense run of games over the next couple of months, basically playing twice a week due to league, cup and European involvement. You could clearly see from Ange’s reaction to the question on why we didn’t get to see Giakoumakis tonight how upset the manager is to lose the player. He must be cursing the bad luck he is having with injuries to his strike force.
As for Giorgos himself he must be devastated. After having no pre season with his old club VVV-Venlo, due to a shoulder injury picked up at the end of the season against Ajax, he presumably has been working hard behind the scenes to catch up fitness wise with the rest of the Celtic squad.
With first team opportunities now opening up due to the aforementioned injury to Kyogo there couldn’t have been a better time for the big Greek to get on the pitch and show the Celtic faithful what he can do. This opportunity has now been extinguished as he waits for the results of the scan he went for post match.
Let’s all hope that the injury Giorgos has sustained isn’t a bad one and that he can get his Celtic career up and running as soon as possible. A big question we will all be asking is can Celtic cope over the next few weeks with him and Kyogo out and Albian Ajeti as our only recognised striker?
Ajeti has basically came in from the cold this season after having very limited game time last season under both Neil Lennon and John Kennedy. Under Ange he has managed to score 3 goals so far this season, 2 in the league against Ross County and 1 in Europe last week against Real Betis. This isn’t a bad return for the amount of game time he’s had. He also won a penalty in that match against Real Betis.
The only thing that worries me about Albian Ajeti is that I think he is unsuited to the lone striker role. Unlike Kyogo who drags defenders out of position and mixes play up, Ajeti tends to be more static in and around the box. This doesn’t mean he’s lazy, just that his game is more suited to working off another more mobile striker.
Unfortunately due to injuries we don’t have many other options so let’s hope that the added game time Ajeti has amassed recently can sharpen his skills and he can finally prove to everyone why both West Ham and ourselves shelled out substantial transfer fees on him.
Conall McGinty
Keep up to date on Twitter @HarryHoodBook
