Celtic star makes surprise admission about new club

It is never easy to adjust to a new club immediately and nobody knows that better than Boli Bolingoli. The Belgian left-back opened up about his difficult start to life at Celtic Park after a £3-million arrival from Rapid Vienna in the summer transfer window.

Bolingoli endured a difficult start to life at Parkhead after a number of lackluster displays earlier in the season that had the Celtic fans on his back. Slowly but surely though he has settled in and is now starting to look like a solid member of the team on the left side of defense and an asset for the future.

A big part of the reason Bolingoli looked to be struggling earlier in his Celtic career was the expectation that he would be filling the shoes of Kieran Tierney at the club. While always an asset in attack, he looked prone to making defensive errors which can be attributed to early season nerves of performing at a big club.

But now with Celtic’s former #63 gone for quite a while, it looks like he has managed to come out of his looming shadow and carve a place for himself in the team. And most importantly it is looking like Bolingoli himself believes that he belongs at this level, something that definitely was not the case earlier in the season.

Now, Bolingoli has himself admitted to having a difficult start to the season. Speaking to Celtic TV, he said:

"“It was not easy for me to adapt that fast, I didn’t expect it also, but we did quite well, me and Hatem (Abd Elhamed) and also (Christopher) Jullien.“All the new players adapted fast. You see it on the pitch how we are progressing every game, getting better and better.”"

The left-back was also quick to let everybody know of his happiness to be at the club, which only appears to have multiplied after the club’s 2-0 win over rivals Rangers away at Ibrox last Sunday:

"“Everybody is happy right now, me for sure as well. After the last weekend, you can be only happy if we win with that result.“It’s a nice result to be in the (international) break with.”"

The club failed to qualify for the Champions League for the second successive season after losing 4-3 at home to CFR Cluj. But it appears that Bolingoli is looking forward to playing in the Europa League against the likes of Lazio, Rennes and of course the revenge tie against Cluj, who are in the same group as Celtic. He said:

"“We can be really satisfied in qualifying for the Europa.“Of course we wanted more, but now we are in the Europa we can be happy with that and hopefully we can do something.“I’m very confident that we can reach something and go really far in this league with this team as we have a lot of quality in there.“I’m looking forward to it as in the Europa League, every club, even the smaller clubs can be dangerous, so we need to be ready for that.“Just playing our game, how we did last month. There will be very tough games we have in that group.“Cluj we have to have our revenge (against), of course.“Lazio is a big club in Italy and then there is Rennes. We have our experience from our preparation, so we have a good group, but we can do something there for sure.”"

Although the Belgian will not have any time to rest on his laurels after the arrival of 21-year-old Scottish left-back, Greg Taylor, from Kilmarnock on Deadline Day. The two now have a battle on their hands to make the starting spot their own after the international break.