Celtic legend Jackie McNamara believes that the club’s central defender Jack Hendry will soon be looking for a way out of the Hoops.
McNamara was recently talking exclusively to Football Insider and he revealed that Hendry’s lack of game time is likely to push him out of the Celtic Park exit door soon.
He said: “The centre-halves have done really well. You look at the ones who came in and have done well – last year Benkovic and Ajer were very good.
“It’s not so much down to him (Hendry), you can maybe look at the form of others that’s maybe stopped his progression. Another one that last year got injured, missed a big chunk of football and has not featured at all this year.
“I think he’ll want to play, aye, it’s inevitable he’ll be desperate to play, but there’s a number of players at Celtic feeling the same way. They do need a big squad for the four competitions they’re still in. The players will look to themselves to see if they’re going to get the opportunity to be part of it.”
A bit part performer
24-year-old Hendry has not seen regular football at Celtic for a while now. This season, the Scotsman has not played a single game in the Premiership so far. He has only featured in the League Cup, playing one time in the club’s march to the final next month.
But the defender did play in the league last season but featured as low as four games and two games in the UEFA Europa League. In all competitions, he played just 15 games, getting 1108 minutes of first-team.
He arrived at the club from Dundee in the winter of 2018 and joined Celtic for a fee of £1.5million. Since joining, Hendry has played only 27 first-team games and has not scored a goal yet.
For Dundee, the former Wigan Athletic man had played 30 games in all competitions, scoring twice in a one-year period at the club. He didn’t make a single first-team appearance at the Latics, but spent loan spells at lower English clubs like MK Dons and Shrewsbury.
TIF Tactics
So far this season, Neil Lennon has used the 4-2-3-1 shape in the Premiership and has experimented with the 5-3-2 in the Europa League. But the centre-back positions are currently filled by summer signing Christopher Jullien and Kristoffer Ajer. Both are regulars and that is why Hendry is currently taking up a fringe position at the club.
The League Cup ends in December and it seems unlikely that Hendry will get game time in a final as big as the Old Firm derby. Hatem Abd Elhamed is also well capable of playing at centre-back and he has already played four times in the Premiership this season, playing as the centre-back against Lazio in the Europa League.
Having said that, games will come thick and fast around the turn of the year. Hendry will get a good judgment of how much he is valued by Lennon. He is currently 24 and a player will need regular football at this age to improve.