Plenty of stuff in the news today, folks, with the transfer window continuing to throw us tales from abroad.
An interview with the agent for the Korean striker Cho Gue-sung reveals that we were in it right to the end and that we had even considering allowing a summer deal rather than one right now. And in the same country, a deal for Oh Hyeon-gyu is now said to be progressing.
We’ll see I guess. But it does seem as if there is juice in this one, and that the deal for Gue-sung’s counterpart might well be the one we tie up in this window.
He’s a fine player. I’ve previously highlighted YouTube clips of him, and he reminds me a lot of Darwin Nunes, both in the good and in the bad of his good.
What I mean by that is that he clearly has the quality to beat players and get into great positions. He moves brilliantly with the ball, he has great feet, great first touch … but his composure lets him down at times in front of goal.
That will come, as it does with all good strikers.
He certainly has enough quality to come here and be a star.
That much is obvious, and Celtic will have done all of the analytics on him to make sure he’s fit enough and capable of fitting right in to Angeball. We aren’t just taking some wild punt.
Oh Hyeon-gyu is certainly an interesting character. His commitment to his football is clear in the way that he got his 2 years compulsory military service out of the way in order to develop his game and work on his football career. That’s all to the good.
This also opens up another interesting opportunity though.
If his fellow countryman is still fighting to get his move come the summer this makes Celtic a more enticing prospect for him, and for that deal and that’s something I’m sure is already focussing minds inside the club, and for the long haul.
The Japanese contingent has made this a good place for their players and Scotland a good place for Japanese footballers as whole … we might be opening the door to a Korea here too.
The whole way we do transfers has changed, and so has the areas we shop in.
He is only 21, against his countryman being 24 years old, so that is a positive regarding his future sell on prospects etc. His attitude also seems to be better, he is a hungry fighter and wants to be successful. He is someone Ange can work with and improve on, he won’t be looking for instant inclusion in the side, but he will be bedded in and ready for the CL next season and it looks on paper to be a sensible move.
By the way, I would still rather we signed Kevin Nisbet, you can have too many foreigners and we are getting to that stage, let’s not lose our Scottish identity.
The limit for UEFA tournaments is 17 non-Scottish players. We’re at that limit now and have been for a number of years. One out (GG) and one in is where we’re at. That’s not going to change the number of non-Scots in the squad.
Don’t think the future of our Scottish identity depends on whether we sign Kevin Nisbett or no ffs. Even if we play 11 foreigners our Scottish-Irish identity’ll always be there. Relax. Puts me in mind of some ‘comedian’ in my workplace recently, (tho he was everythin a comedian should be, except funny), callin Celtic ‘Japan F.C.’ Reminded him of his club in the 90’s, full of English ! No much difference. Selective memory these people.
Or 80’s & 90’s more like.
I’ve not seen him play and I never like to judge players based on other peoples comments and/or youtube video highlights so the following is caveated BUT it slightly worries me James that, in your opinion, his composure in front of goal lets him down at times. We have too many forwards like that already (Kyogo, GG and Maeda et al). It’s that lack of composure that cost us in the CL – we need to find someone who is simply a goalscorer a la Griffiths, Hooper etc we don’t need another striker who will score 20+goals a season but also miss 40 other gilt-edged chances. Scoring goals in Scottish football as a Celtic striker is not a difficult task – scoring them for Celtic at the highest level on a Tues/Weds night is what we need
Agree on the face of it the younger South Korean looks like a very promising signing and he seems eager to come here. Cho though I’d forget about for now. I reckon he sees us as a Tesco and is only leaving the door ajar because Waitrose hasn’t delivered the goods for him yet.
Don’t know much about the boy.. but I’ll trust Ange’s judgement. My only concern is if we sell giakkoumakis we don’t have that focal point up front now, the target man player. They were the good old days, when we had Henrik, playing off Sutton, and Hartson, we don’t seem to go that way these days. But let’s hope the boys a player, and we get him banging the goals in before the cup final.