Ahead of the Scottish Cup tie with St Mirren on Saturday evening at Celtic Park, Celtic’s assistant manager, John Kennedy has been previewing the match and giving us all an insight into the wonderfully talented attacker, Kyogo Furuhashi. The little striker hit 22 goals for the season up at McDiarmid Park at the weekend, with that now 19 in the Scottish Premiership.
After disposing of Scottish Championship side, Greenock Morton last time out in the same competition at Parkhead, Ange Postecoglou and John Kennedy will be hoping for more of the same due to the fantastic run of form we are currently on. A comprehensive 4-1 mauling of St Johnstone in the cinch Premiership at lunchtime last Sunday, pulled the Celts closer to another League title under the Greek-Aussie and now attention turns to another cup tournament as we await our rivals in the League Cup on the 26th of this month.
Kennedy has been over the course many times before with this club and understands the potential pitfalls of not maintaining consistency and performance levels against lower-level opposition in the dosmetic cup scene. Speaking to Celtic TV ahead of the game against Stephen Robinson’s men, he said: “From a mindset perspective, we’ve got to be prepared for the fact that it’s a cup-tie and you lose it then you’re out of the competition.
“In a league game, we’ve got a number of games where we know that what matters is where you are at the end of it. In a cup game you have to perform on the day, so we have to make sure we’re consistent, the way that we’ve been, but on that day go out and deliver a performance because that’s what we do.
“We train and we work and everything leads to that performance, so it’s important that when the cup games come around, we perform the way we would expect and if not, then we’ve got to fight and work and make sure we’re in the next round.”
Kyogo Furuhashi managed a brace against Saturday’s opponents last time out in the League at home and Kennedy has revealed just how important the ex-Vissel Kobe man is to the current Celtic team. “He’s a very humble guy and I think he appreciates what the fans offer the team,” the Celtic assistant manager said, “and I think he takes a great lift from that, scoring in front of the crowd.
“You can see him straight away, the first thing he does is go straight over to the crowd, and at the end of the games he’s usually the one up front leading the party, but he’s not like that at all. He goes around the training ground, he’s very quiet. Out on the training pitch, he works ever so hard, like the rest of them do, and just gets on with his business.”
He said: “That’s testament to the type of character he is, and it’s great to see these type of guys getting the rewards because we see how much he does behind the scenes. The fans see him on a matchday out there performing and scoring the goals, and he makes it look so easy but he puts a lot of work in behind the scenes to make that happen.”
Watch John Kennedy speak about Kyogo below…
🗣 “He’s a terrific player. I think we seen that the minute he walked through the door”
John Kennedy pays tribute to @Kyogo_Furuhashi after his superb form of late! 🔥
Watch the interview with the Assistant Manager in FULL now on #CelticTV ⤵️https://t.co/NQFUabjLT9#COYBIG🍀 pic.twitter.com/JN3S8UdhyL
— Celtic TV (@CelticTV) February 7, 2023
And here’s that full interview with Celtic’s assistant manager…
Paul Gillespie
