Vidar Riseth is missing Kasper Hogh's biggest failure amid defence of Celtic star
Former Celtic star Vidar Riseth is only seeing half the picture with Kasper Hogh's struggles. Hogh has been in rotten form for months, failing to hit the ground running following his £11million arrival from Bodo/Glimt in the summer.
Hogh scored a hat-trick in his second game for the club but has not scored since. He has shown himself clumsy in front of goal, and a drop in confidence has seen him shy away from opportunities to shoot in recent weeks.
But the greater concern is his all-round contribution, which has come up short too often.
Still, former Celtic star Riseth, who watched Hogh at his old club, is staying positive on the striker's potential. "Hogh is a big, strong target man. When he played for Bodo, they played a different style that worked for him," he told SunSport.
"I think he’d like to get more crosses, as he did at Bodo, because he’s such a big lad with a good finish. Now they’re playing more up to him and asking to get the ball back again, so it’s different for him, but the most important thing for Martin is Celtic winning games.
“If Martin wants to use Hogh as a way to give more space to other players, then that’s the best way to use him.”
He added: “Sometimes at Bodo he didn’t score the goals, but there’s always one or two defenders on him all the time. That gives space to the midfield and to other players to come through and score the goals. If he works hard and does a good job, it doesn’t matter who scores.”
Riseth is missing the other half of the picture
Riseth is right, it doesn't matter if Hogh does his job elsewhere and doesn't score, but the problem is that he is not doing that, either.
He showed some positive holding play early in his time at the club, but he has been poor on that front for months at this stage. He is rarely where his teammates expect him to be, and when he is, he is trying to flick the ball on constantly when Celtic need him to take the ball, bring it down and wait for others to make their way up the pitch.
Particularly in European games, Celtic are finding themselves falling apart in the first third, and they are rarely able to stay in the final third because they cannot get the ball to stick.
Hogh needs to offer that. We have said for weeks that the lack of goals would not be an issue if the Dane could offer what he was brought to the club to offer, but as things stand, he is offering nothing.
