If you had said on Hogmanay that a debate would soon be raging on Nicolas Kuhn’s place in the Celtic team, and that Brendan Rodgers’ men would rather be limping over the line in the Premiership title race, you might have been accused of going a little doolally on the New Year swally.
On Sunday though, it was Celtic who were staggering punch drunk to a dismal defeat at the hands of the league’s bottom side, St Johnstone, with the most damning indictment of their performance coming from their own manager, who accused his men of slipping into their comfort zone.
When Celtic walked out at Ibrox on January 2nd, they had dropped four points all season, winning 18 of their first 20 Premiership matches and drawing just twice.
There was talk of this team replicating or even surpassing the achievements of Rodgers’ ‘Invincibles’ side from his first spell in charge of the club. And Kuhn looked a dead cert to be sweeping the boards when the player of the year gongs were handed out come the end of the season.
Since that chastening defeat to Rangers, despite a gallant effort against Bayern Munich in the Champions League, Celtic have – in relative terms - fallen off a cliff. With the sure knowledge that the title was in the bag halfway through the season, as their flaky city rivals were never going to punish any slip ups, Celtic have lost their edge.
And Kuhn, despite scoring a double in the following match against St Mirren, has been the poster boy for their regression. He has scored just twice since that game on January 5th.
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Sadly, for Kuhn and for Celtic, he has been unable to do so. He hasn't found the net since that night in Bavaria.
As it stands, Kuhn has 18 goals and 14 assists for Celtic this season. Far from shabby. If you had offered him the chance to have reached those sorts of numbers by this stage back in the summer, he would have bitten your hand off, particularly as issues with his wisdom teeth had afflicted the first few months of his career at the club after his arrival last January.
Now, it’s like pulling teeth just watching him trying to get past his man.
His confidence looks shot, and his killer instinct in front of goal has deserted him. He drifts inside almost reflexively now, and even then, as evidenced with a wild effort after a decent run to the edge of the box at McDiarmid Park, he is thrashing at shots where once he would have deployed finesse.
Worse still was his inability to get onto a loose ball a yard or so out from the goalline. Yes, he may well have taken a bit of a clattering from St Johnstone’s Stephen Duke-McKenna in the process, but it should have been a certain goal, and it was a moment that summed up the lack of conviction in his play at present.
Forget competing with Leroy Sane or Karim Adeyemi then, now Kuhn should be worrying about Yang Hyun-jun and James Forrest. So abject was his showing against St Johnstone, and so consistently underwhelming has he been of late, then his place as a starter in this Celtic side must surely be under threat.
Had Celtic managed to replace Kyogo Furuhashi in the winter window, Rodgers may well have already rejigged his front three, with Daizen Maeda on the left and Jota coming over to the right. However, with Adam Idah also toiling for any sort of form, Maeda is needed up top, and that has probably bought Kuhn a little bit of grace.
It seems though that by half time in Perth, his manager’s patience had snapped. And I wonder what Rodgers is thinking about the configuration of his attacking line, and what surgery may be required there in the summer.
A striker is, of course, a must. Just as Rodgers said it was in January, mind you. With Idah failing to hit his straps though, the need for a quality addition up top has only increased since then, if anything.
He has ability, of that there is no doubt. But these growing, nagging doubts about his ability to consistently produce his best level chime awfully closely with those that were raised by Austrian pundits when Celtic recruited Kuhn from Rapid Vienna in the first place.
To offer a crumb of mitigation, perhaps Kuhn is simply a bit tired. The 44 games he has played so far this season is comfortably the most he has managed in his career to date, and maybe a few weeks on the bench would do him the world of good. Whether through fatigue or just poor form though, that is where he looks to be heading.
The bigger question is, do Celtic look to sell Kuhn in the summer when his stock is still relatively high, or hope that he will once again come back revitalised in the new campaign and prove all his doubters wrong?
It seems incredible to say it given his performances in the first half of the season, and no, I haven’t been on the swally. But if he doesn’t pick up soon, it wouldn't be a huge surprise if Rodgers was leaning towards the former.
