Celtic will elevate UEFA Conference League standout to more senior role

Celtic supporters may be annoyed at the club's inability to land a striker during the winter transfer window, but manager Brendan Rodgers has suggested there could be a "natural finisher" already in the building waiting for their opportunity. 

Johnny Kenny, 21, has recently returned from a highly successful loan stint with Shamrock Rovers.

The Republic of Ireland Under-21 forward netted 25 times from 74 appearances in his homeland, including scoring five in the UEFA Conference League. 

Kenny's performances have caught the eye of onlookers, and now with Celtic failing to bring in a replacement for Kyogo Furuhashi over the past month, Rodgers knows he will have to invest his time in those who he can already cast his eye over at Lennoxtown. 

And the Celtic boss is already liking what he's witnessed since the beginning of January.

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“Johnny Kenny will be here and we can see even in the three weeks or so he's been training with us and the coaches who've been here before, they see the real difference in him from his experience going back, playing with Shamrock, playing with Europe,” said Rodgers.

“Brilliant finisher, physically in a good place, so I'm now putting my time into him and working with him and seeing how he develops now because he's a natural finisher in the box, there's absolutely no doubt about that.

"So, yeah, that's what we'll look to do."

(Image: SNS Group) Reflecting on how his squad looks going into the business end of the season, Rodgers commented: "We've done some really good business in the window. A few things didn't quite drop for us that we would have liked, but however it ends, you know the squad you have and fundamentally, we're here to develop the players now for the rest of the season that are here.

“I think it's something [signing a new striker] that I said clearly we wanted to do, we wanted to have that support at the top end of the field. We didn’t manage to do that.

“There's so many different facets to the transfer and obviously the identification of a player, then convincing the player to come, which in the main is never a problem for here. But no, we just weren't quite able to get a deal done on that front. Like I say, it's something that we as a club will go away, we'll review the whole process and then look to be better again in the summer.”