Celtic’s new striker Giorgos Giakoumakis is a relatively unknown quantity. The former VVV-Venlo front man had a storming season in front of goal last season but unfortunately his 26 goals could not stop his side being relegated to the Dutch second tier.
To get a handle on what type of player the Hoops have got themselves, Hamish Carton of 67 Hail Hail, interviewed Venlo’s recruitment analyst Marc Lamberts who gave a very open and frank opinion of the Greek striker.
Hamish asked the question probably on every Celtic fans lips when he probed if Giakoumakis prolific scoring record last season was a one off and what Lamberts had to say was very interesting, “It’s hard to say. Well if you look at his record before the season it wasn’t that spectacular, in the sense of I wouldn’t think he wouldn’t go to a top side in the Premiership or the Eredivisie or that kind of level.
“But the thing is, that he works on a few aspects of his game. When he came to us, his heading wasn’t good. He called it in the right positions. He made sure he lost his marker that kind of stuff that was really good but his heading lacked quality.
“So we hired an attacking coach, who worked a lot on his heading. And now if you see the scout reports of different websites and clubs. They all mentioned his heading is very good.
“I didn’t think he would score more than 15 goals. And that’s also because we are relegation battling side.
“We were relegated unfortunately. But mostly those teams at the lowest five teams need a striker that scores 10 plus goals.
“I will think he will do that but not exceptionally well. Now, obviously he scored twice or three times, four goals in a game. So that really helps. Penalties as well.
“But I do think this, this was a top season for him, but I still think he’s a 15 plus goals a season guy.“
Very hard to come away from that summation feeling positive about our new striker but at least it was an open and honest appraisal of Giakoumakis and hopefully the Greek striker can continue his latest goal scoring exploits to help the Hoops win the league back from their rivals across the city.
I didn’t think it was a negative response, he says the boy works on his game so maybe he’s getting better because of the work he’s doing. He’s at an age where he can still get better and at Celtic, if he starts, he’ll always get chances so that should mean a barrowload of goals. I’ve watched his videos and he’s got good touch and a lot of strength and he’ll bully defenders. I can’t wait to see him pull on the jersey for his debut.