NEIL LENNON takes his Celtic side to face St Johnstone at McDiarmid Park tonight. Added to the squad since Saturday’s 3-0 win at home to Ross County has been Ismaila Soro following on from Polish Under 21 star Patrick Klimala who made his first team debut in the Scottish Cup win at Partick in the first game back after the winter break. Soro won’t be involved tonight but he’ll get the chance to see his new teammates before and get his first sight of the Celtic Support.
When Celtic take the field on Sunday lunchtime against Hamilton it will be interesting to see if there are any new additions in the match-day squad. Neil Lennon’s tempering of expectations in yesterday’s press conference – covered elsewhere on The Celtic Star today – seem to indicate we may well be done and dusted.
What was clear was only a week or so ago Lenny was publicly stating his desire for two experienced players to join the fold for the battle ahead. Given the ages of Klimala and Soro, both 21 years of age you’d be fair in assuming Lenny wanted those two players above and beyond the young promising players did get.
The new Bhoy 😎
Soro ✊🍀 pic.twitter.com/iaCAMZQuor
— 90 Minute Cynic (@90MinuteCynic) January 28, 2020
I outlined in a couple of articles recently where I felt Celtic needed those experienced heads. Left back and left sided midfield.
At the moment Celtic have £5.5million worth of full backs in Boli Bolingoli and Greg Taylor who maybe don’t have the full confidence of the manager. Why else would Jonny Hayes being played out of position in recent games?
A left back and preferably one who could also assist at Centre back when we play three central defenders was surely something Lennon was looking at. Especially so with Bitton, Jozo and Elhamed taking it in turns to battle it out for the nickname ‘sicknote’.
Further forward the left midfield could also benefit from the nous an experienced head would bring to the title run in. Mohamed Elyounoussi and Mikey Johnston are both great players and if both were fit enough to be relied upon every week you’d be less concerned, but with only six league starts under his belt Moi – as good as he is – isn’t one you can lay your hat on when it comes to availability.
Mikey Johnston is a serious talent but given his in and out nature on match days due to injuries, it leaves you unable to fully rely on our academy graduate to be considered a regular starter.
As such a left winger or two footed option we could utilise on both flanks wouldn’t have been a bad shout.
I do get there is merit in streamlining the squad and Scotty Sinclair’s exit made sense. He wasn’t playing and he was earning a high wage. Lewis Morgan just didn’t look like he was going to cut it on either flank or as a striker, so moving the lad on also seemed wise. If we had a back-up plan.
That leaves Forrest, Moi and Mikey covering the wide roles. Yes we do have Shved and of course there is also Arzani but they are so far out the picture they are barely the scribbled signature of the artist in the corner of the canvas.
Daniel Arzani has a brief sub appearance at Firhill as his total involvement this year, while Shved has barely collected half an hour in a first team shirt all season. That smacks of gambling.
I have no problem with big earners going out when not involved but we can’t dilute the quality, there is too much at stake. It could well be quality is the key. Perhaps within our budget we haven’t been able to attract any player other than a squad filler, no better than what we have. Strange we hadn’t worked that out before we let two squad players leave though.
That aside if experience and quality wasn’t available we could accept it. With a couple of days to go it could well be Lenny playing a bluffing games with agents, players and their clubs. What I do hope however is that when Lennon did his about turn, he wasn’t having his own expectations lowered for him, rather that tempering them himself. I think a few of us have trust issues with those holding the purse strings. I hope they aren’t holding puppet strings too.
I won’t be giving up hope just yet but if Tynecastle and ‘the’ Rangers league defeat has been used as an excuse to hold back on recruitment it may well be worth bearing in mind that if it can happen to them it could happen to us.
The likes of Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibs have all strengthened we can all accept others to do the same. As such to assume we’ll face the same level of opponent from January to May and that we therefore have enough, could well be a touch on unnecessary bravado.
This title race is precariously balanced, we could have tipped that in our favour by flexing our legally financially strengthened muscles. We should take this as an opportunity to turn the screw and we still have time to do just that.
A couple of experienced players for key positions at Hamilton on Sunday would give Celtic a shot in the arm and shoot our rivals in the foot..
Niall J
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