You can’t deny Saturday saw a massive blunder from Celtic striker Giorgos Giakoumakis.
A penalty-kick to go top of the Premiership and extend our winning run to 6 games. He stepped up and produced a poor attempt that was easily saved by Max Stryjek. He would then miss another golden opportunity at the death when he stabbed wide from a James Forrest miss-hit shot.
Since then, he’s had to come in for some pretty wild criticism. Supporters were left disappointed that Josip Juranovic didn’t take the spot-kick, but Ange Postecoglou confirmed post-match that the decision was made pre-match to give it to the Greek forward.
Giakoumakis was only making his 2nd start for the club and 6th appearance outright. However, even 3 days after the incident, he’s still getting stick thrown his way.
Frank McAvennie has labelled it the “worst penalty ever” in a massively over-dramatic statement [The Herald]. We’re now just under 72 hours from when the game took place, and still Giakoumakis is taking flak for a bad miss.
There’s no denying the casual looking run-up didn’t help. It was a big moment for the football club and the Greek forward stepped up in controversial fashion. But he has a fine record of penalty-taking doing the exact same run-up. It wasn’t done out of a lack of care or respect for the situation. That’s just his style.
It’s time for Celtic fans to get behind Giorgos Giakoumakis again
It’s not as if Giakoumakis has a history of missing sitters at key times for the football club. He’s a newly-signed centre-forward still getting to grips with the Scottish game. It was only around a month ago he started making appearances for the club.
So the criticism needs put into perspective. He’s been found guilty of missing a penalty. That’s it. Did Callum McGregor receive similar stick for his miss against Ferencvaros? No. Again, most likely the run-up had a lot to do with it. But McGregor also gets away with it because Celtic won the game.
Giakoumakis didn’t perform well against Livi, that can’t be denied. But he’s going to be a big player for the club this season. It’s clear that Postecoglou is going to be relying on him plenty to take the goalscoring burden off of Kyogo Furuhashi.
Over the next 8 weeks, Celtic are going to be involved in 14 games. Giakoumakis is going to be a big part of that. He doesn’t need to go into this hectic period feeling the heat of the support and the pundits. Not for one penalty miss that has plenty of time to be rectified further down the line.
It was a big moment, but that’s all it was – a moment. It isn’t season-defining and anyone that tells you it could be is living far too deep into the negatives.
If we’re to have a successful season, Giakoumakis is going to have to play a big part in that. It’s time to start getting behind him again and allowing him the freedom to find his goalscoring touch once more.
In other news, Report: 2021 Celtic-linked Ben Siegrist in talks over new Dundee United contract
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