So John Guidetti has came out and blamed the state of Scottish football as the reason for the Swede to reject any possible permanent switch to Celtic.

According to the striker accomplishments in the Scottish Premiership don’t mean as much to Swedish national manager Erik Hamrén.

Guidetti would say:

“It felt like my goals at Celtic were not counted in the same way as in other leagues and I can understand.”

Now I would like to put a few points across that show that Guidetti seems to be talking out of his backside.

Ok first off lets talk about Henrik Larsson.

Larsson is a Celtic legend and a national hero in Sweden. He played for the Glasgow side between the years of 1997 and 2004, during which time he won many of his 106 caps and scored quite a few of his thirty-seven international goals.

Many stated that Henrik stayed in Scotland too long, but in his thirties he departed for Barcelona and helped them win the Champions League in 2006. The fact is Larsson felt loved by the ‘Hoops’ fans and playing in Scotland never held him back with the national team.

Johan Mjallby also had a pretty decent career at Celtic and also with the Swedish national team. The defender captained the Swedes during the 2002 World Cup whilst he was a Celtic player!

In the past Sweden’s all-time top scorer Zlatan Ibrahimovic has spoken affectionately about Celtic, mainly due to Larsson’s time in Glasgow’s east end.

Zlatan stated in an interview:

“But after playing at Celtic Park it is easy to understand why he (Larsson) chose to stay there for so long.”

Now lets look at players in the last two seasons that have played for Celtic and also represented major nations.

Fraser Forster broke into England’s World Cup squad for Brazil last summer after impressive Champions League and Scottish Premiership performances with Celtic. Virgil van Dijk was called up for two Dutch squads in 2014 by experienced coach Guus Hiddink. On loan defender Jason Denayer made his Belgian debut earlier this year in a Euro 2016 qualifier after impressing at Parkhead.

Then there is current Celtic full-back Mikael Lustig, who has represented Sweden forty-four times and is only missing at the moment due to injury. Maybe Hamrén has different rules for different positions John.

That surely shows that if you have the quality, then playing in Scotland (especially with Celitc) won’t hold you back.

Guidetti mention his fine form towards the end of 2014. That actually helped get the striker back into the national pool as he was called up for qualifier against Montenegro in November.

Now Guidetti seems to think his form in Scotland meant very little, yet it was his form that actually got him selected. His grievance seems to be that he didn’t play. But surely that is down to how he trained and prepared for the match while with the squad. Not down to his Celtic form at all.

Talking about his Celtic form, he hardly touched a ball in 2015, due to him failing to score in many of the games he started. He would then be dropped and Leigh Griffiths came in and he did extremely well (Griffiths has just earned a Scotland recall).

Once the goals dried up, most Celtic fans started to question Guidetti’s attitude. The forward or his agent seemed to occupy our media with plenty of stories about links with clubs elsewhere. None of those clubs came forward with anything concrete.

I would be extremely surprised if a bigger team than Celtic, from a vastly improved league, comes in for Guidetti’s services. If they do, then I can only see him seeing a lot more game time from the bench.

Now don’t get me wrong, Scotland is an inferior league to places like England, Spain, Germany and the like. But is John Guidetti really good enough to prosper in such an elite field? I seriously doubt it.

If only the twenty-three year old had learned to just do his talking on the pitch, then we would have hardly heard a peep from him since Christmas!

The fact is Ronny Deila and Peter Lawwell will be relieved that they didn’t throw wads of cash at Guidetti’s feet late last year. He’s still unproven and not fast enough or skilled enough to command a place in their team nor in Sweden’s national team.

He uses the Scottish Premiership as a tool to hide behind because he has yet to reach his potential. It is time that Guidetti finds a bit of humility and then maybe he can mature into an international class striker!

But I really doubt the Celtic faithful will be shedding any tears due to his departure.

Posted on June 5th, 2015 by scott
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