Kyogo has set his Celtic teammates a challenge for the remaining two Scottish Premiership matches. The Champions play Hibs at Easter Road on Wednesday night and then concluded the league campaign on Trophy Day at Celtic Park on Saturday lunchtime when Barry Robson’s Aberdeen will be the visitors.
Celtic scored twice at the weekend against St Mirren and both goals from Kyogo and his captain Callum McGregor were quality strikes but the two goals conceded to an ungracious St Mirren were poor and a symptomatic of the drop-off in performance we’ve seen since the Scottish Premiership title was won at Tynecastle a few weeks ago.
Kyogo points the current crop of Celtic players needing to score four more goals this season to beat the total scored in the 1966/67 league campaign by the legendary Lisbon Lions. It’s maybe one of the records that can be achieved with some slipping away in the past few weeks, such as the record points total for a season which is held by Brendan Rodgers’ Invincibles from season 2016/17.
“We need four more goals to match that record. Can I score four more? I don’t know if I can do it! But as a team, I believe it is achievable in two games.
“I know there is a lot of history at this club and a lot of great achievements, from great teams like the Lisbon Lions. Teams like that one are the reason the club is where it is today and it’s the reason we are all here today,” Kyogo said in the media room at Celtic Park on Saturday, as reported by Scottish Sun
.“You see the pictures on the walls around the stadium and you hear a lot about the great history they made. I will be glad if one day my picture is on the walls as well, but there are many things I need to do before then. That’s got to be my focus.
“It would be nice to get to the record, but if we want to enjoy such a moment we need to do well in training and produce performances in the matches.”
On his brilliant goal at the weekend, which was his 31st of the season for Kyogo, the Celtic Player of the Year said: “It was nice to score another goal, but I always aim to score goals to win the game. There is always the target to score as many goals as I can and hopefully I can add to my total in the final matches of the season. The most important thing is to win the matches, though.
“It was a difficult game, but eventually we managed to get back level. Obviously I was disappointed not to win the match. We’ll work hard on things in training and try to make sure we win our next match.
“We try to set our standards as high as possible and if you can reach that level in every game, that is very good. It is not always possible, of course, but you have to make that the target,” Kyogo added.
The Celtic strikers focus remains firmly on the remaining matches in the Scottish Premiership with the trip to Hampden following that not yet on his radar. “I am not thinking about the Scottish Cup final yet. We have two games to go and we want to win these matches.
“It will be important to be at our best in the final because it is another big game with a trophy.
But for us the most important thing is to focus on these games because we want to build momentum before then. Continuity is very important for us.”
