Celtic’s Fab Four have not done well going out on their own.

There is an obvious uncomfortable truth sitting at the heart of Celtic’s season right now, and it is one that all of us acknowledge. We are nowhere near the same team without Matt O’Riley, Kyogo Furuhashi, Nicolas Kühn and Adam Idah.

Anyone who has watched this side over the past year can see it. The goals have dried up, the movement has slowed, the cohesion has gone, and what we have now looks like a blunt, hesitant version of what once felt sharp and inevitable.

But here’s the part that makes it more interesting, and more disturbing. None of those players – not one of them – are exactly setting the world alight away from Celtic Park.

Start with Kyogo. At Celtic, he was relentless. His movement was elite, his instinct in the box was second nature, and he scored goals in bursts that changed games and seasons. He didn’t just finish chances; he created them with his intelligence. Defenders hated him because he never stopped moving, never stopped probing, never stopped asking questions.

Since leaving, it’s been a disaster. The goals have not come, mostly because he rarely gets onto the pitch. It has been awful watching from afar as he has struggled to make even a modest impact at the clubs he has passed through, and maybe there’s a truth here which his people might not want to acknowledge; Kyogo didn’t just make Celtic better. Celtic made Kyogo better.

Then there’s Adam Idah. He arrived with pressure although not much expectation and, to his credit, he delivered in moments that mattered. Big goals, big contributions, a physical presence that gave us something different. He wasn’t Kyogo, but he didn’t need to be because he gave us an option. He gave us depth a way to change games.

Away from Celtic, that impact has been virtually nil. Minutes, rhythm, confidence, all of it has been patchy. The goals haven’t flowed. The influence hasn’t been sustained. A winner in a Welsh derby could have been a launchpad … he then got injured. Again, it raises the same question. Was Idah elevated by the environment he was in? Because at Celtic, even when we weren’t at our best, we still created chances. We still played on the front foot. We still gave strikers opportunities to be decisive.

Nicolas Kühn is maybe the most telling of the lot. At Celtic, he looked like a player who had finally found his level.

Direct, aggressive, willing to take people on, willing to make things happen. He gave us width, unpredictability, and a sense that something might happen when he got the ball. Since moving on, that spark has all but vanished. He has shown flashes, but not the same sustained impact. He looks like a player still trying to find his place, still trying to impose himself on a different structure.

Como recently announced that he was available at a knock-down fee, and again, you come back to the same conclusion. Celtic, at its best, gave players like Kühn the platform to thrive. He was playing in a system that suited him. He isn’t now. Hell, he is barely playing at all right now. It’s fair to say that this move of his hasn’t worked out.

Then there’s Matt O’Riley. He is the one who ties it all together, because he is the one I would have put money on being a success. I thought he joined the right club in England, I thought he fit perfectly with their playing style. The early injury was a blow, but when he got fit things had changed and he never made it back to where he’d been.

He moved to Marseille on loan. We never saw again his goals from midfield nor his creativity, intelligence or control. At Celtic he dictated tempo, linked play, arrived in the box at the right time, and gave the team a rhythm that is completely absent now, not just from Celtic but from his own performances at his current club.

Which brings you to the uncomfortable truth at the centre of all of this. Individually, these players are good. Collectively, at Celtic, they were something more.

They were part of a system that worked. A structure that created chances, that played with intensity, that allowed attacking players to express themselves. They fed off each other. They amplified each other and as part of this team all of them looked like they could scale greater heights. None of them has done that.

A lot of this is down to bad decision making by agents and by the players themselves.

Playing at a higher level sounds good in theory but I think some of these guys have over-estimated their ability to make that leap. Their agents don’t care that they have gone to clubs who do not suit their style … they see pound signs and that’s what matters. We’ve talked a lot here about players making bad moves driven by money.

What is clear is that none of these moves has worked out.

Whether players moved too early, moved to the wrong clubs or whether they just aren’t as good as they think they are, what a dismal failure they’ve all been … and what makes it worse is that if they’d stayed at Celtic they’d be playing every week and doing well … and we’d be in a much better condition as a club. There would, of course, be slightly less surplus cash in the bank, which I suspect is the real reason we’re here and those players are where they are.

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