If everything goes “according to plan”, Celtic will soon complete the signing of Korean international Yang Hyun Jun. I have no idea whether or not he’s a good player; I am sure that he is, I am sure we’ve done our due diligence. But I know some things that trouble me, and I would be a hypocrite not to point out what those things are.
The most obvious of the two things that concerns me is that he’s Korean. Of course. I’ve written about this a couple of times now, and yesterday focussed on the fixtures at Celtic which coincide with the Asian Cup. I see this signing, I look at the composition of our entire attacking threat, I imagine having to do without all of them and I shudder.
I hope to God someone knows what they are doing. I hope to God there is a contingency in place if we’re having to look at crucial fixtures without them in the team.
The other thing that bothers me, that nags at me, is his willingness to go publicly to war with his club in agitating for the move. There may be broken promises, there may be issues of trust, but for him and his agent to air those grievances with a megaphone … well, I try to think of how we’d all feel if that was us. I try to imagine what our response as fans would be to a Celtic player who did that in order to get a move from Parkhead.
I’m not saying he’s a bad seed or that his agent is … I’m saying it leaves me cold somewhat. It leaves me wondering if this is the right move for us to make, if he’s the right fit, if we wouldn’t be better looking towards Europe for our next signing.
Like I said, I don’t know that much about him as a player except that he’s highly rated and we have a good strike rate now.
I do know that I’ll feel more comfortable when we sign the next attacking player who won’t be away for the first two months of next year, and that one of the reasons I’m comfortable with guys like Abada being still in the team is that they haven’t rocked the boat, they haven’t made public demands and they and their reps are behaving calmly.
I would have preferred it had this guy and his done the same.