Sky Sports journalist Anthony Joseph has been sharing his thoughts on Celtic defender Carl Starfelt and his time at the Parkhead club so far.
This comes after Joseph made an appearance on a recent episode of The Celtic Exchange Podcast where he spoke about a number of topics surrounding Ange Postecoglou’s side.
Starfelt has had a mixed start to life at Parkhead, with the Swede coming in for criticism from the fanbase following some of his performances, which included an extraordinary own goal against AZ Alkmaar in Europa League qualifying.
On the other hand, he has been entrusted with a starting role under Postecoglou, playing every minute of Celtic’s league campaign so far as he gets to grips with the Scottish game.
On the subject of Celtic’s summer transfer business, Joseph had this to say about Starfelt in particular, who joined the club from Rubin Kazan for a fee of £4.5 million.
He said: “He does seem to get outpaced quite easily.
“It may just be the opposition he’s played against so far but yeah, he’s got a lot to do, he had an absolute howler away at [AZ] Alkmaar.
“Players take time to settle, but you say he divides opinion – I think at the moment he’s not hitting the pass marks.
“He came on to a good game after that howler at Alkmaar, I thought, as well, so we’ve got to give him credit, he could have just completely crumbled or tried to hide but he was definitely a presence at the back for some nervy moments there.
“The jury is definitely still out on him. I would say he is performing maybe under a pass mark at the moment.”
TIF Thoughts on Anthony Joseph’s comments on Starfelt…
With Starfelt an ever-present in the SPFL for Celtic so far this season, this says to us that he is currently seen as an important figure in the team for Postecoglou, despite some criticism.
Have you been happy with Starfelt's performances so far?
Yes
No
In terms of his performances in the SPFL, the fact that he has managed to earn himself an overall rating of 7.27/10 so far suggests that while he has had a fairly decent start to his debut season in the Scottish top division, he still has some room for improvement compared to some of his fellow teammates given WhoScored has him as Celtic’s seventh-highest-rated player in the squad at this moment in time.
Moving forward, we feel that Starfelt should be cut a little bit of slack for his performances given it’s his first season there and needs time to fully settle in as Joseph mentioned, however, if he doesn’t manage to get a consistent run of positive performances under his belt, he could well find himself out of the team if Postecoglou thinks there are better options available to him in that position.
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