Brendan Rodgers has confirmed that Yuki Kobayashi is seeking a loan deal away from Celtic Park in the January transfer window. The Japanese star has been on the periphery of the squad for some time now and is viewed by many – including the Celtic boss – as one who needs to go away and get minutes elsewhere to ensure his career doesn’t stagnate.
Rodgers has been clear that the squad he has at present is far too large to work with and that it must be trimmed this winter. Speaking not so long ago and as reported by Scottish Sun, the Celtic manager outlined the situation.
“There will be players who will be here for six months and won’t have played. It’s no fault of them. The squad is a lot bigger than I would want. I think that there will be more players who will look to go out and get game time.
“After the last window shut, it was a case of speaking to some of the players that didn’t get out. I said, ‘Let’s see how we go over the next six months. If it doesn’t work out with game time, then of course we’ll look at it in January’. Some of those players have had game time and will be happy, while others will feel they want to play.”
Presumably when he said this, the young defender was one of the players he had in mind, along with several other teammates who don’t have the immediate minutes they need. Alexandro Bernabei, Mikey Johnston, Kobayashi and a handful of others need to get away from Celtic Park to play consistently. The squad is far too big and it is inhibiting us from adding more quality to it as well in the meantime. With a whole raft of central defenders ahead of him in the pecking order now, it’s best if the player leaves sooner, rather than later.
Kobayashi would have left this summer transfer window had it not been for an injury issue and Rodgers has now revealed that he is actively looking at a move back to the J-League in the coming weeks. Rodgers said of the 23-year-old: “In fairness to Yuki, he would have gone out on loan and he got injured just before he went out. He’s training well, it’s not that he’s doing anything wrong. His attitude has been fantastic, he’s working hard, but we’ve a limited number of centre-halves that we can play.”
Kobayashi remains highly rated back home in Japan with many J-League clubs expressing an interest in bring him back for a loan deal from Celtic. There is no doubt that this will be beneficial to all parties with Yuki getting back to playing football and Rodgers reducing the squad size by shifting on a player who is not currently in the manager’s plans where we have an overload of central defenders anyway. If Kobayashi does well in Japan hopefully there will be an option to buy in any deal done in January.
Paul Gillespie
