CELTIC MANAGER BRENDAN Rodgers has urged Mikey Johnston to produce more of an impact in a frank assessment of the Irish international’s progress.
The winger has received more game time this season after a loan spell in Portugal and was handed his first League start for the Scottish giants since December 2021 on Wednesday against Hibernian.
Rodgers doesn’t want Johnston to rest on his laurels, though, demanding the 24-year-old to make a long-awaited breakthrough.
“Mikey needs to do more, that’s the reality,” Rodgers told the BBC after the 4-1 victory.
“He has big talent. He comes into the game but if you are going to start the game, we need more impact from him but that is something we can hopefully see over the course of time.
“He’s not young. He’s 24. At some point, you need to grab the bull by the horns and be aggressive.
“It can be easier coming off the bench, it doesn’t feel like pressure. You can come in and show your qualities.
“If any player wants to be starting here, you have to have that personality to come in and play.
“But he’s been really good in training and earned the start. Hopefully, if he does get more starts, he can show more of his qualities.”
🗣️'Mikey needs to do more. He's not young, he's 24. At some point he has to grab the bull by the horns'
— BBC Sport Scotland (@BBCSportScot) December 6, 2023
Brendan Rodgers says winger Mikey Johnston needs to show more when starting for Celtic ⤵️#BBCFootball pic.twitter.com/NAkvEE1mTn
The Glasgow-born attacker broke into the Irish set-up this year, playing eight times and scoring in two games against Gibraltar.
Looking forward to his performances under the new manager! Good creative player.
What Evan Ferguson wants and needs!!
@Ollie Fitzpatrick: the new manager needs to unearth some midfielders from somewhere. I’ve been following the Irish team since the 70s and this is by some distance the weakest bunch of central midfielders available to any manager. We have decent defenders and some huge potential up front but we have no one who can win the ball and control the play in the middle. When teams like Luxembourg are playing through us for fun you know we have a problem. But if the new guy ditches the tippy tappy crap trying to play out from the back it will be a huge improvement. I lost count of how many goals that cost us
@Gearoid MacEachaidh: Luxembourg ding get the credit they deserve… They’re still ignorantly pawned off as minnows. But in fact they’ve progressed and left us with that tag. Look at the results they’ve had since they beat us against quality teams. And they got a playoff. It’s just lazy still going on like it was a shock they beat us
@robert kelly:
*dont
@robert kelly: you’re spot on.
@robert kelly: in fairness it was a shock
@robert kelly: Don’t be making out luxenboroug to be a better, stronger, more advanced side and calling us minnows. Yes, they’ve improved from wipping boys and we’ve regressed under dire, poor tactics and management. However, if you analyse their results with more scrutiny, you will see that after they beat us at home, we handily beat and outplayed them on their own turf in the return match. Also, in this campaign and friendlies they have been hammered by portugal twice (15-nil on aggregate), malta have beat them, Slovakia beat tgem. They’ve scrapped by in teo games against Liechtenstein. They’ve beat bosnia twice and iceland once but both those sides are in serious trouble, not producing players and have seriously regressed. So yes, we should still be beating them and Kenny over it!