Celtic manager makes exciting claim about Giorgos Giakoumakis

Giakoumakis arrived at Celtic with a lot of expectations in the summer. He had enjoyed a sensational 2020/21 campaign, finishing as the top scorer in the Eredivisie while playing for VVV-Venlo. His start to life at Parkhead has not been brilliant though.

Giakoumakis did not have much of a pre-season and he has struggled to reach full fitness since arriving at Celtic on transfer deadline day.

According to stats from Transfermarkt, he has made just 2 appearances for the club till now, which have combined for 33 minutes of football. Both of them came off the bench as a substitute.

But his performance against Motherwell after coming on in the 73rd minute of the game was lively. Giakoumakis showed some good movement and appeared much better than he had against Bayer Leverkusen. The international break appears to have done him good and Ange Postecoglou has made an exciting claim about the Greek striker.

Celtic manager makes exciting claim about Giakoumakis

As reported by the Daily Record, speaking about Giakoumakis’ situation, Postecoglou said:

"“Giakoumakis is the one who benefited the most from the international break. He missed pre-season and the start of the season. Then he had 10 days quarantine so he was really under-done.“We were kind of holding our breaths to get him through to this break and he feels a lot better now.“He feels ready to make an impact. That’s great for us. We have him, Albian Ajeti, obviously Kyogo, Jota, Liel Abada, there’s Mikey Johnston now available and James is on the way.“We have good attacking options to start and on the bench.”"

Before his Celtic arrival, there were certainly many questions about Giakoumakis and maybe rightfully so. There is no denying the fact that his goalscoring record before the previous season was not great at all.

In fact, the 26-year-old scored more than half of his career goals last season. That is an incredible statistic to say the least.

Now entering his prime as a footballer, Celtic fans would be hoping that last season was about Giakoumakis finally coming into his own as a player rather than a one-off.

If he can rediscover that form at Celtic, it would be a massive boost for the club. He did finish as the top scorer of the Eredivisie and by quite some distance. But before that, he has to reach full fitness and break into Postecoglou’s starting XI. At the moment, Kyogo is very much the first-choice striker at the club.