I don’t know what has gotten in to Michael Stewart as of late, after his disastrous performance covering the league cup final, but he has yet again come out with absolute nonsense that he hasn’t thought through.
Speaking on BBC Sportsound, Stewart said: “The guys he has brought in from Japan, by all accounts these are good signings, but I just think there has to be a little bit of an identity with Celtic.
Under Brendan Rodgers and in the recent past, they have had a lot of domestic players. That helps the national side, and I don’t want to see that being discarded, to a certain extent.
With more and more Japanese players coming in, which is clearly a market you would look to exploit because he knows it so well, I think I’d be keen to see the youth and domestic players kept in as well.”
If Stewart cared to do even five minutes of research before coming out with this rubbish, he’d realise that Celtic have more domestic players in their starting eleven and also in the squad as a whole than we had under Rodgers.
We have a core team of British and Irish players who are mainstays in the team under Ange Postecoglou. Hart in goals, Ralston at RB, Taylor/Scales at LB, CCV is English born at CB, Welsh regularly plays at CB too, then in midfield McGregor our captain obviously plays every game, alongside Turnbull. Forrest when fully fit is No.1 choice on the right wing and Mikey Johnston has also play several times recently on the left wing.
If he wants to talk about youth then we’ve seen young Henderson been given chances, Dawson, Moffat, Shaw, Ozaze, and let’s not forget Dembele was playing in pre-season for us before a bad injury and young Dane Murray also played early on in the season.
It just feels to be that Stewart is having an unnecessary sly dig, and it is totally uncalled for and also totally inaccurate. I mean, I didn’t hear him come out and complain about us having lost our identity when we had several French players in the team for a number of years…
We’ve had Ki, Naka and Kyogo from that part of the world. Big Ange knows the area well and it looks like we’re dipping our toe in the water. Players from that region appear to me as technical, athletic, brave and frikkin’ happy! Scottish media needs to be more positive, expect more detractors until we start playing again.
He’s had his wings clipped …. He needs to follow follow the party line to keep getting the gigs. Shame really as I once thought he might have had the balls for it .
Michael Stewart turning in to a soup taker like the rest of the Scottish sports media, he’ll start sounding like skeletor Rae soon thought he was better than that.