Breaking News: Celtic predicted XI vs Rangers as Brendan Rodgers shuffles his pack
Former Celtic striker Oh Hyeon-Gyu has revealed he left Parkhead for Genk because he was forced out of the picture when they bought Adam Idah.
The South Korean international mobed to Belgian football this summer for a fee of around £2.5 million with Celtic recouping what they paid for him in January last year.
Oh grabbed his first goals for Genk last month and scored three goals in two games after impressing for his new club.
But he admitted he still felt deflated at his Hoops exit.
Oh said: “I had lost my place in my national team because I was no longer playing for Celtic.
“It was then I knew I had to get a transfer.
“Now I am in a good place here.
“I scored 12 goals in total for Celtic, but I hardly played in the last six months.
“They had brought in a new striker, someone with a different profile – a big, strong boy – and they had to find a solution for me.
“I thought that was a shame at first because I really loved Celtic. It’s a great club.
“But when Genk came calling, I didn’t hesitate.
“I had a few options in the English Championship, but I just wanted to come here.
“When you see all the players who came through here – Kevin De Bruyne, Thibaut Courtois, Leandro Trossard and more. That’s impressive, isn’t it?”
I asked the question here last week: “Who can Brendan trust?” And the answer, so far as Celtic’s European humiliation in Germany was concerned, was no-one at all. Including the manager himself.
It was Brendan Rodgers who said Celtic, in his estimation, had never been “more ready” for the Champions League. That has turned out to be a grotesque misrepresentation of the facts. Strength in depth at European level has been exposed as being a total falsehood. Dortmund wasn’t about the Yellow Wall. It was more about the glass ceiling.
The idea that playing the runners-up in last season’s Champions League final was some sort of free hit for Rodgers’ team was an exercise in self-delusion on the part of supporters who couldn’t see what was staring them in the face. It was wishful thinking at the expense of heeding factual evidence.
I also said last weekend that Celtic needed to avoid “drowning in Deutschland”. They went down with all hands on deck in the Signal Iduna Park in a 7-1 hiding that the manager admits was a tough watch. It was the third time in Celtic’s history that the club had conceded seven goals in a Champions League tie.
The common denominator is Rodgers has had the misfortune to be the manager of the team on each of those occasions. Self-analysis is a lonely business. You only have your own thoughts for company. What must be preying on Rodgers’ mind is the nagging suspicion he’ll never truly reach the next level in Europe with Celtic.
That was his primary aim when he returned to the club for a second time. But, in spite of being backed by his employers to the extent that they broke their own transfer record twice in quick succession to sign Adam Idah and Arne Engels, that ambition is as far away as it has ever been.
And Celtic’s next European opponents, Atalanta, are last May’s winners of the Europa League, having beaten the winners of the Bundesliga, Bayer Leverkusen, in Dublin to gain that distinction. Celtic have, by a country mile, the best squad in Scotland for domestic football.
The defeat of St Johnstone by six clear goals last weekend was, to my way of thinking, the most complete performance given by any team in the 12-year history of the Premiership. It was a masterclass in coordination, imagination and penetration. But high altitude abroad leads to breathing difficulties and Celtic suffered the equivalent of asphyxiation in Dortmund.
What now has to be tested at localised level is the psychological damage done by beatings of such a devastating nature in Europe. Where would you least like to be today in the immediate aftermath of being mauled in Dortmund? Probably in the back of beyond at a stadium devoid of atmosphere with an early start on the road to for a mid-day kick-off time against play Ross County.
Reputations that were diminished in Dortmund – and no-one avoided that fate – have to be refurbished in the Highlands. For Rodgers not to win the league title this season would be an embarrassment beyond measure given the financial advantages that have enabled him to construct a multi-million pound team yet to lose a goal, far less a point, in the Premiership so far.
Bottom lips that were trembling in Germany have to undergo facial reconstruction and become the stiff upper lip variety to negotiate whet the former interim manager at Aberdeen, Neil Warnock, described as the “muck and nettles” of Scottish football.
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