MIKAEL Lustig has appealed to Celtic manager Ronny Deila to add former England internationalist Carlton Cole to the squad at Parkhead following his successful trial.
Cole, who parted company with West Ham at the end of last season, is a free agent and will hold further talks with Deila and Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell this week.
However, the Norwegian coach is keen to add the vastly-experienced 31-year-old, who has returned to London after training at Lennoxtown last week, to his pool of players.
Anthony Stokes has fallen out of favour during the 2015/16 campaign and Deila only has Nadir Ciftci and Leigh Griffiths to choose from up front.
The Scottish champions are still involved in all three domestic competitions and also have Europa League group matches to play in the coming weeks.
Lustig was impressed with how the ex-Chelsea, Wolves and Aston Villa man performed during his time in Scotland and believes he would improve the Celtic side if he signed a permanent deal.
He said: “I think he hasn’t played for a little while, but you can still see he’s a good player. He’s experienced and he looks very good in the box.
“He’s done really well down south and he brings us something that we don’t have right now. He’s different to what we have. He’s a box player and is maybe stronger in the air.
“You always want new players to make the squad better. If we do sign Carlton Cole then it’s not going to make us worse – we will be better.”
Meanwhile, Lustig, the Swedish right back who stressed he would be fit to face Fenerbahce at Parkhead on Thursday night, has dismissed fears playing in Europe will hamper Celtic’s bid to retain the Premiership.
He said: “We struggled a bit in the past when we have come back from Champions league to play in the league.
“But we were down against Aberdeen and then Ajax gave us a boost. We know that we can play good football and take points away from home.
“I think that Europe is important for us. It’s always good to play well when you have a good result in the bag. If we can do well in Europe then we will do better in the domestic league as well.”
Lustig added: “We are still Celtic. We should have a decent enough squad. It’s not just 11 or 14 players who have to do the work every game.
“The whole squad needs to be ready – especially when we play in Europe on a Thursday. We will need to change things at times and everyone has to be ready.
“My foot is still a little bit sore. I will take it easier and hopefully I can be back training as normal on Monday.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel