Neil Lennon has weighed in on Fraser Forster’s Celtic future after his incredible performance against Rangers in the League Cup final.
Fraser Forster put in arguably his best performance in a Celtic shirt on Sunday as he almost single-handedly carried the Hoops to a Scottish League Cup title. And that is the huge statement considering his display in the club’s historical 2-1 win over FC Barcelona in the Champions League.
From the 1-0 scoreline it is hard to imagine how many chances Rangers actually had to score. But chance after chance went begging as nobody could find a way to beat the big Englishman between the sticks. The Rangers had 16 shots with 7 of them being on target, but Forster was in inspired form and had no plans of being beaten on the night.
The biggest highlight was probably his penalty save from Morelos. After taking a lead completely against the run of play, it had looked like Celtic had thrown the game away when Jeremie Frimpong gave away a penalty as well as getting himself sent off. James Tavernier decided to give the penalty away to Morelos so that he could get his first goal against the Hoops, but that was not to be as long as Forster was in goal.
The Englishman looked like a man possessed and determined to prove his value to the footballing world after stagnating on the Southampton for the past several seasons. It is only on a season-long that he joined Celtic earlier this summer. But after that performance, the Hoops will be hoping to make that deal permanent as soon as possible.
As reported by the Daily Record, when asked about Forster’s future at the club, the Celtic boss said:
"“He’s one of the best goalkeepers around.“But he’s not our player and then there’s affordability. We need to sit down with him and see what he wants to do. His performance came as no surprise to me because I’ve seen him do it many times before.“You can see how happy he is to be here and I think he’s gone on record saying he loves it here so we’ll see.”"
Now there can be no doubt that Craig Gordon or Scott Bain are not in the same league as Fraser Forster. And it is hard not to wonder that if Celtic had completed the loan deal earlier, they might have been in the Champions League. Next summer they must do everything in their power to make the deal permanent.
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