The Giakoumakis Blow Leaves Celtic Needing Scotland’s Best Player To Plug The Hole.

This is not a disaster. It’s a blow. It’s a setback.

We have lost our in-form striker for Sunday and that would normally have most of us weeping into our beer.

The big guy has been dreadfully unlucky with some of his injuries this season and this will hurt most of all because he’s been exceptional in the last few months. But we cannot dwell on it.

Celtic must move forward. Fortunately, that’s not terribly hard to do.

Out goes Scotland’s in form striker. In comes Scotland’s best player to be replace him.

This is the sort of blow that most managers would be smiling over.

If Kyogo does the business and runs the show nobody will look back and wonder what might have been any more than some of us wonder how the Dembele Derby would have turned out had Griffiths not been ruled out when he was the in-form player and the guy who was scoring the goals.

Now, the manager has said that Kyogo won’t be fit to play the full game … but no matter. Even if the manager doesn’t put him in the starting eleven and we go with Maeda – a fantastic player in his own right of course – we still have enough firepower to turn out their lights. Kyogo from the bench is a deadly prospect should we require him.

Who wouldn’t want the options we have? And this is what they are for, of course, for days like today and news like this. We have a big squad full of really good players. We’re ready for this one.

We are prepared for this one. A single injury blow does not change that.

For the first time in a long time, this is a team greater than the sum of its parts.

And whilst Giakoumakis is one of those parts, there are others … when one player is denied the chance to be the hero, that opens the door for somebody else.

So it’s time for the hero to step forward, whoever that’s going to be.

I know who my money is; I’ll give you a clue. He’s Japanese.