Japan based A Celtic State of Mind contributor, Liam Carrigan, has high hopes for Celtic’s Japanese January signing, Yuki Kobayashi.
Spealing to Paul John Dykes on yesterday’s episode, Carrigan gave his thoughts on what Celtic fans can expect from Kobayashi moving forward:
“Kobayashi, I believe in the fullness of time, will supplant Starfelt as Carter-Vickers partner in central defence, assuming we can hang on to Carter-Vickers.”
“I believe, you know, Starfelt and Carter-Vickers have a better partnership at the moment, but that’s purely because they’ve played together for as long as they have.”
“And it’s not a slight on Carl Starfelt, I think he’s a much better player than a lot of people give him credit for, but, I believe Kobayashi has the potential to be better, and, I think next season we’ll see that.”
“He needs game time. he needs experience, he needs to get comfortable playing with another central defensive partner and building the same partnership as Starfelt and Carter-Vickers have built.”
“Plus, having a natural left-footer at left centre-back is something we’ve not really had recently.”
“Particularly in Europe, that’s going to be a massive advantage, where that split-second timing, that extra second Starfelt would take to switch it over to his right foot, Kobayashi can just first-time hoof it into the crowd if need be.”
“That is going to be a big, big difference that you’ll notice, particularly in games that are played at the higher tempo than we’re used to.”
It’s a very interesting insight from Liam, and I’m really looking forward to seeing Kobayashi play in these remaining games this season, particularly against ‘Rangers’ at Ibrox a week on Saturday, where we’ll really get to see what he’s made of.
You can check out the full acsom episode below, with the Kobayashi talk starting just after the 35 min mark.
