Last night amongst the fanfare and backslapping as we cruised into the Sottish Cup Quarter-final against St Mirren at Celtic Park, one sour note was the injury and subsequent withdrawal of Japanese attacker, Kyogo Furuhashi. The in-form striker has been vital lately with his goals and movement cutting teams to ribbons at times.
Ange Postecoglou will have been worried as Kyogo has hurt himself before with a shoulder injury and that’s what it appeared to look like he had done last night. With crucial games coming thick and fast for the Hoops and with a Viaplay League Cup Final against our fierce rivals still to come in a fortnight, we need our top man back.
Celtic v St Mirren – Scottish Cup – Fifth Round – Celtic Park Celtics Kyogo Furuhashi leaves the pitch injured during the Scottish Cup fifth round match at Celtic Park, : Saturday February 11, 2023. Photo: Steve Welsh
“The movement you need is on your shoulder,” sang Paul McCartney and The Beatles and yet again Celtic’s top goalscorer is forced off early in a match with the same injury sustained against theRangers last season.
After the 5-1 win over St Mirren yesterday evening, Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou confirmed the problem and while he isn’t ready to rule out the Japanese striker for the upcoming League Cup Final against theRangers, it’s reasonable to assume that Kyogo is now a major doubt.
“It’s his shoulder. He had a similar one last year. We’ll just wait and see, we’ll get it scanned. He’s a pretty quick healer, I know what he’s like, he’ll probably want to train on Monday – but we’ll wait and see how the scan goes,” the Celtic manager said in his post match interview.
It is becoming quite laborious now the heavy handed approach teams take to our players and although nobody tackled Kyogo last night, he was sandwiched in-between two St Mirren players which caused the fall which led to his shoulder injury. Jota was challenged in the game quite heavily too and pointed to his sock when the referee refused to give him a foul for another hefty challenge over at the sidelines.
Celtic v St Mirren – Scottish Cup – Kyogo Furuhashi after the Scottish Cup fifth round match at Celtic Park, Saturday February 11, 2023. Photo Steve Welsh
Teams are becoming more and more cute in how they challenge Celtic players and they know they can leave enough in to hurt our players as none of the officials give us any protection. See David Turnbull and Callum McGregor for further proof of this. The tackles by Callum Butcher and Andy Halliday should have been enough to see jail time never mind a card!
Take a look at Kyogo’s awkward fall last night and you’ll notice the way he is pushed by one St Mirren player into the other…
Paul Gillespie
