There has been an apparent lack of steel that usually resides in the heart of a typically dominant Celtic defence this season. Shane Duffy had been out of form all season before he jetted back of to the south coast having done little to help the cause. Stephen Welsh has been thrust in – yes, he’s done well – but at the same time, his inexperience has shown. And the decision to loan out Jack Hendry – in a year where he has proved his worth so much that he has now earned a spot in the Scotland national team for the Euro’s – has been catastrophic.
Christopher Jullien would be the answer to those problems, however following a season-ending injury just before Christmas against Dundee United, the Frenchman has had to watch from the sidelines; something he says has exhausted him mentally. Jullien, who arrived from Toulouse in June 2019, had been a key member for The Bhoys’ before injury curtailed his season – but he says the injury won’t get the better of him.
Speaking to The Celtic View, the Parisian said: “Seriously, my family was crazy when they were watching me watching the games. Either I’d be talking too much or I couldn’t watch some moments in the game because it was stressing me so much.”
“It’s good to see the team when they have good moments, but when it’s a little bit more difficult, it’s sometimes a little bit difficult to watch. The goal now is to be back with the team for pre-season and I’ll do my best to do this.”
“Week after week you can see the improvement and my goal right now is just to get my strength back. I’m just really happy to be back at Celtic and we’ll put a calendar on everything and just focus every week on what we’re going to do to get to the best point when I can come back with the team.”
“I can’t wait to have that. It’s going to be strange because it’s been a long time. When you go from being with your team-mates every day and then you don’t see them for three-and-a-half months, it’s just so strange, so I can’t wait to see my guys and be there on the field with them and share some moments.”
Injured just four days before a game against theRangers, it can be heartbreaking to see a player hurt at a crunch-time of the season – something that French Eddy helped Christopher through.
“At the moment when I got injured, I remember Odsonne coming up to me and saying, ‘Chris, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay. I was devastated. Every time in my career when I’ve had a little injury, I always thought I would come back really fast.”
“The first thing I said to him was that I was going to miss the Rangers game. It was a really important game that could have put our season on the other side, so to miss that was really difficult in my mind. And then to miss all the rest of the games was so painful.”
