One of Celtic’s summer recruits from Rubin Kazan, Saed Haksabanovic, made his first league start for the club yesterday in the dramatic 2-1 win over St Johnstone.
We were told when the Montenegro international joined the club, that he could play on either flank or through the middle.
In previous matches when he’s came on, he played on either the left or right wing, and has looked creative and physically strong and has great control of the ball. He also started on the left wing against Shakhtar and was instrumental in our goal.
This time though, he played in the No.8 position as Matt O’Riley dropped back one into Callum McGregor’s No.6 spot.
Based on his performance yesterday, I think that may well be his best position. He can definitely play as a winger too though, but I thought yesterday he was the best player on the park by some distance.
I tweeted after he went off that Celtic may have found themselves a new Stan Petrov, as that’s who he reminded me off when I watched him yesterday.
The way he was able to burst from deep and carry the ball up-field, going past players and playing a key pass or winning free-kicks was prime Petrov, and the man himself seemed very impressed with him in the Sky Sports studio yesterday after the match.
As did manager Ange Postecoglou, who commented after the match that he thought he looked “very, very good”.
Haksabanovic was also pivotal in Celtic’s opener, as it was his ball that flashed across the face of goal and was turned into his own net by Andrew Considine
And it seems like Celtic fans on Twitter were very impressed by his performance too.
Check out the tweets below.
