Celtic fans will be hoping for the best with rumours that Mohamed Elyounoussi could miss a considerable period emerging in recent days. The 25-year-old exited his Norway side’s setup prematurely last week with their boss Lars Lagerback explaining his injury situation.
“Unfortunately, Mohamed has an injured foot and can’t play against the Faroe Islands or Malta.
“He has left the squad and returned to his club.”
Lagerback didn’t exactly go into much detail over Elyounoussi’s injury, other than where it was in the body, and that has led many supporters to fear the worst. Murmurings of a 4-6 week lay-off have been mentioned on the forums and on Twitter.
It is worth pointing out that the above tweets have effectively come from nothing but online chat. There is just as much to suggest that Elyounoussi will be back by next weekend than he will be out of action until 2020.
However, the winger does still face a nervous wait to find out the extent of his injury. If the news does end up being bad, it will continue a remarkable trend of Celtic’s big loan signings missing extended periods through injury.
Elyounoussi injury would continue unwanted trend
Elyounoussi was arguably our biggest loan signing of the summer – outfield at least. He has made a sparkling start to life in Glasgow, netting seven goals and assisting many more as we chase success on several fronts.
Last year, our biggest season-long loan signing was Filip Benkovic. The Leicester man missed a big chunk of the season after picking up a leg injury in a win over Hamilton in January. The Croat didn’t miss the rest of the season as the report suggests, but he featured very little under Neil Lennon – ending his loan on a bit of a sour note.
The season before that, it was Patrick Roberts who was the club’s prominent loan prospect. Big things were expected of the Englishman after he had impressed during a previous 18-month loan. Unfortunately, Roberts missed four months of season 2017/2018 after picking up a hamstring injury at Motherwell.
On top of those two there’s also the obvious example of Daniel Arzani who hasn’t featured for 13 months after picking up an ACL injury in a game last Halloween.
Thankfully, Elyounoussi’s injury doesn’t look like keeping him out for that length of time (touch wood) but you still fear the impact losing him for a few weeks could have. We’re not overly dependant on the Norwegian but any team would miss a player of his quality.
Celtic fans will just be hoping that the knock isn’t as bad as feared.
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
