Good Celtic Players Who Started Off Gash

As the title says, guys who are remembered fondly now but had * starts to their Celtic careers.

I'll get the ball rolling with John Hartson and Mikael Lustig.

 

Charlie Mulgrew. Didn't play before he left us the first time round, and looked poor when he first returned. Slotted in at centre-back and never looked back.

A lot of people will say Wanyama, too, I suppose.

Kelvin Wilson was another. Took him a long time to come onto a game.

Rogic, too. He looked like he was going nowhere until fairly recently.

 

Rogic

 

Does Henrik count?

I can't remember being too crazy about Forster when he first came either, can't remember if he was * or it was just me being bitter about Boruc, though.

 

Forster annoyed me in the beginning, too. Armstrong is a more recent one (though, really, he started off good, went *, then became excellent). From what I remember, Brown was a bit average. Henrik's the obvious one. Bobby Petta had a fairly torrid time at the beginning.

 

Dembele didn't start off too great.

 

It took a while for Brown to justify the fee paid for him IMO.

 

I remember we resigned him the day of the sion game and not everyone was happy with it. I recall him being completely incapable of coming out and clean catching a corner in his first season , although he was class when we permanently signed him.

 

Armstrong, jvoh

 

Did Charlie mulgrew not play his first game back at LB he played *, then didn't play until the 2-0 game at ibrox which was at LM where he was actually quite good.

 

I had this argument with folk back then but without him we wouldn't have got by Spartak Moscow and the money that came with the CL. Justified pretty much instantly, financially.

 

Gamboa

 

JVoH scored on his debut and was a * hero from that minute forward until he had his * season.

 

Lee Naylor

 

Anton Rogan

 

Kenny Miller
On a more serious note Zurawski took a wee while to get going if I remember correctly.

 

You're right.

I remember a game where we had to play Mark Wilson and Charlie Mulgrew as our centre-backs. Wasn't too confident but the big man strolled through it and looked a quality defender for months afterwards.

He even looked a quality left-back the following season when Izzy got injured. That was a surprise because, as you said, he looked so poor there at the start of Lennon's reign.

 

That was his POTY season, everybody remembers him at CB but he was quality anywhere.

Never looked back after Sammy's Ibrox game.

 

Remember Zurawski scored a really skilful goal at Dunfermline, where he skinned his man on the touchline..

Seemed to get going after that.

 

It's a shame that injuries wrecked his last year or so at Celtic, and that he didn't get a new deal.

A good, experienced player that could play in multiple positions. I think he'd have been a useful centre-back in this team.