Kyogo Furuhashi has declared new signings Tomoki Iwata and Yuki Kobayashi ready to make an impact at Celtic.
The Japanese forward, yesterday named Premiership Player of the Month for December, is excited to be joined by two more of his countrymen in Glasgow.
Iwata, signed from Yokohama F. Marinos was expected to arrive in Glasgow on Friday, while Kobayashi – a former team-mate of Kyogo’s at Vissel Kobe – made the bench for Monday’s draw with Rangers.
With a wealth of options at Ange Postecoglou’s disposal, the league’s top scorer cautioned they may have to be patient in waiting for a chance – but fully expects they’ll prove their worth to the club.
“They are both excellent players and they are both excited and ready to play here in Scotland,” Kyogo said. “I'm excited as well, to play with them. I played with Kobayashi at Vissel Kobe so it will be good to play alongside him again. It definitely helps me, but each player has to show with his performances what he brings to the club. Sometimes he may have to wait. This is why it's important for me to concentrate on my own performances.”
Those performances have yielded 16 goals for Kyogo and aided in establishing a nine-point lead at the Premiership summit. The striker maintained he tries not to set targets, but admitted he’s got half an eye on hitting 20 before long.
READ MORE: Ange Postecoglou reveals Celtic route he won't take despite VAR frustration
“I want to thank all our staff, my fellow players and supporters for helping me towards this award,” the 27-year-old said. “I will keep working hard to try and bring good results for the team to pay back these awards. I'm very happy with it. I want to work hard for the team and if I do it will help win this type of prize. If I keep scoring goals it will contribute to the team.
“I try not to think about the number of goals I score, it's more important to play step by step. I guess the next target for me will be 20 goals but the more important thing is that my team-mates provide me with a lot of good passes and chances so I can finish their good work. If I do that, I will contribute to our team.”
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 here