What Celtic boss doesn’t want from Sebastian Tounekti
With Yang missing due to is involved with his international side at the Asian Games, Martin O’Neill has to look to fill the gap caused by Celtic’s most improved player being unavailable until essentially after the international break…
Tonight Celtic are in Perth to take on St Johnstone and all eyes will be on the team sheet which will be released around 6.45pm this evening to see how the Celtic manager reshapes his side and who he brings in the fill the void left by Yang’s absence.
For a while now Martin O’Neill has talked about changing the system in order to accommodate his best forward players and after a season where the Champions were woefully short in attacking areas, Celtic now have an abundance of options with the difficulty being how to get them all onto the park.
So tonight the plan may well be to swap like or like by bringing in Sebastian Tounekti as a direct replacement for Yang or perhaps Martin will see this as a perfect chance to revisit his fabled 3-5-2 formation, which he did use in the final ten minutes of the title showdown with Hearts back in May and it certainly worked to great effect that unforgettable afternoon.
That would mean getting two strikers on the park from kick-off and then it’s a matter of deciding on which two from the three options he has available. Most probably it would be Kasper Hogh, coming back in after a few weeks on the sidelines through an injury picked up in Linz, and the outstanding Camilo Duran.
Alternatively there could be a first start for Shim Mheuka, who was so unlucky to be denied his first Celtic goal in the closing stages of the match against St Mirren on Saturday evening.
The teenager on loan from Chelsea, is clearly going to make an impact at Celtic and with the fixture list ahead of the international break being intense and significant, the manager might decide to rotate by resting up Duran or keep Hogh on the bench and bring him on later in the match.
So even if the formation changes the choice personnel is still unclear as Martin O’Neill and his coaching staff have more options than they have been used to since coming into the football club last season.
The other alternative is the like-for-like swap with Sebastian Tounekti replacing Yang and getting the chance to show that he can be an effective player for Celtic. So far the jury is well and truly out on that one.
Yesterday Martin O’Neill pondered the Tounekti dilemma and seems ready to give him his opportunity to make an impact. The Celtic manager understands the frustration from the support about the Tunisian international winger’s lack of an end product and the easy chance he missed on Saturday to put the game beyond St Mirren was another source of dissatisfaction.
“Seb’s good,” Martin O’Neill assessed, as reported by The Herald. “He’s got really good ability around the edge of the penalty box. The thing I like about him is that he can go both ways.
“Sometimes there’s a bit of frustration, but there’ll always be a bit of frustration with wide players who might lose the ball once or twice. The most important thing to tell wide players is if they can go past people, just keep doing it,” the Celtic manager said.
“And that’s an easy comment for a manager to make, or a coach to make to them, but it’s different when you’ve lost it two times on the trot, and the crowd then start to get really anxious, particularly at home, and you think, well the next time I think I’ll just lay it off.
“So I don’t want that, I want to still encourage people to go past them.
“And when he comes inside, as he scored against Kilmarnock, he can do that. He’s missed the chance on Saturday night, and when he’s in and around the edge of the box, he can actually check outside and put it across.
“So it’s a matter of keep encouraging him, and while he probably sees at the moment that Yang has done exceptionally well, and Yang does great work for us as well when we don’t have the ball. Those are the things that I think Seb can pick up on and can learn.
“That should be his aim. I think Seb has natural talent. I think it’s the other parts of the game that I think he’s got to have a wider picture, but hopefully that will come.”
We’ll have to wait and see if Sebastian Tounekti gets the nod this evening. If he does then he really has to show the end product that all too often has been missing from his game during his time at Celtic.
