It’s time for Kyogo to make his mark against Rangers
HISTORY is rarely kind to the Celtic strikers who failed to score against Rangers. John ‘Dixie’ Deans was the one exception to the rule.
Between 1971 and 1976, Deans won three league titles, two Scottish Cups and two League Cups. He played in a European Cup semi-final against Inter Milan and skied a penalty over the bar long before Harry Kane made it fashionable.
Deans remains a cult hero on account of his impressive tally of 124 goals in 184 appearances. While he terrorised Eddie Turnbull’s Hibs team with a hattrick in a League Cup final at Hampden, however, none of his Celtic goals came in the domestic fixture which mattered most.
He came close to breaking his duck when a goalbound strike was chalked up as a Dave Smith own goal in January 1973. On another occasion, John Greig handled a Deans’ shot on the line for a penalty kick converted by a goalhungry team-mate.
Players and managers will tell you this stuff doesn’t matter much. So long as someone is scoring the goals, so long as the trophies keep coming, it’s a team game. Maybe they’re right.
Scan the biography of Dixie Deans on the fans’ site which doubles as a Celtic A-Z, however, and a couple of pars are devoted to explaining how and why he never actually scored in an Old Firm game. Remember that next time they tell you it doesn’t matter a jot.
The truth is that, for any striker at Celtic or Rangers, scoring against ‘the other lot’ in an Old Firm game can make or break a reputation. For some, like Lubo Moravcik, it was a fast-track to acceptance and adulation. For Ally McCoist and Henrik Larsson, it was a fast-track to beatification.
Failure to score in a Glasgow derby is the monkey no striker wants on his back. Alfredo Morelos took 15 games to find his range and the longer the monkey lingered, the heavier the burden became.
Kyogo Furuhashi is nowhere near that point yet. His paltry number of appearances against Rangers have thrown up precious few chances.
His first game at Ibrox ended in defeat after he played out of position on the left of a three-man attack beside a semi-detached Odsonne Edouard. There was a
Scottish Cup semi-final lost after extra-time at Hampden. He began to look slightly cursed when, in the opening seconds of Celtic’s 4-0 win in September, he succumbed to a freak shoulder injury and left the pitch. He’d barely touched the ball, never mind missed a chance.
The trouble is that, when it comes to Celtic and Rangers, context is routinely mistaken for making excuses.
In a world of petty bickering and point-scoring, all anyone cares about is the bottom line. And while the bottom line states that Furuhashi has scored an impressive 15 goals in his last 23 Celtic appearances, he has yet to do it against Rangers.
Rock bands can be cursed by a difficult second album. An artist launches their career to fame and fortune with a stellar, platinumselling shelf-clearer, then suffers a critical and commercial nosedive with the release of the follow-up.
For a time, it seemed as if Furuhashi might be suffering from a difficult second season. Despite a hamstring operation to fix his problems of the previous term, he lacked confidence and instinctive finishing in a Champion League campaign when one chance after another was passed up.
When Giorgos Giakoumakis scored Celtic’s last European goal of the season against Shakhtar Donetsk, some fans called for the
Greek to be given a run as the first-choice striker at Furuhashi’s expense.
Yet the Giakoumakis fan boys ignore a curious anomaly when it comes to Ange Postecoglou’s stranglehold on Scottish football. Despite the Australian winning three of his six Old Firm tussles by an aggregate of 10-3, none of the goals have come from a recognised centre-forward.
While Jota and Liel Abada repeatedly turn up for games against Rangers, Furuhashi and Giakoumakis have yet to make any impact at all.
Right now you’d query whether Giakoumakis ever will. After a promising start, the striker is consumed with self-pity over his failure to be rewarded with a bumper new salary and looks like a player hell-bent on heading for the exit ASAP.
Furuhashi, meanwhile, seems to have used a World Cup snub by Japan boss Hajime Moriyasu as all the motivation he needs to prove a point.
Since a wretched night against RB Leipzig, Celtic’s talisman has smashed eight goals in 12 games.
That’s all well and good. But it’s the goals against Rangers which dictate how Celtic strikers are gauged.
And, for Kyogo Furuhashi, Ibrox is already shaping up as another day of judgment.