Celtic’s recruitment since the arrival of Ange Postecoglou as manager has been one of their biggest strengths. It has made sure that the club were able to turn things around after the disaster that was the 2020/21 campaign and the Hoops ended up winning the Premiership and the Scottish League Cup in the Australia’s first season in charge thanks to it.
In a short span of time, Celtic have been able to discover stars like Jota, Kyogo, Matt O’Riley, Reo Hatate, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Josip Juranovic, Liel Abada and several others. But on the other hand, some moves have naturally not worked as well.
The signing of Oliver Abildgaard on a season-long loan from Rubin Kazan in the summer seems to fall into that category. The Dane arrived surrounded by high expectations but has failed to deliver on any of them till now.
And as reported by Football Insider, former Celtic star, Frank McAvennie, said about the situation:
"“He has not come in and done what Ange wanted.“Put it this way, he is not any better than what we have got.“I thought he was going to come in and stamp his authority because we need somebody like Scott Brown. I thought he was going to come in and do that and he has not done it. We have not filled the void yet.“When you come up against a decent team you need someone sitting, and we do not have that. I thought that is what he was going to do but now they are just going to terminate it. It looks like they have come to a deal with the club.“"
Celtic tipped to terminate the contract of the struggling player
Abildgaard was very highly rated when he arrived at Celtic and the expectation was that he would take up the role that Nir Bitton had vacated, when he departed Parkhead at the end of last season after almost a decade at the club.
Unfortunately, the Dane has not been able to do that. According to stats from Transfermarkt, he has made 9 appearances and played 156 minutes of football for Celtic till now, without making a single start during that period of time.
Not one of them has been a start by the way. So, it is pretty clear that things are not working out for Abildgaard at Celtic and the sole positive thing about the deal might be the fact that the club did not sign the Danish international on a permanent deal in the summer.