With Marc-Antoine Fortune signed up the Tony Mowbray era is well under way with the first friendly of the season looming on Sunday away to Brisbane Roar.
The partnership that Fortune forges with Scott McDonald is vital to our Champions League prospects as we all know that the McDonald-Georgios Samaras partnership is a non-runner.
Amongst the many disappointments of last season the decline of Samaras was one of the most noticeable and painful.
From the heights he reached in September at Fir Park to the powder-puff performances of the last few months of the season it was hard to believe that we were watching the same player.
Amongst the comments coming from Tony Mowbray after signing Fortune was the claim that the strikers arrival at West Brom increased the goal return of the team although Fortune himself only scored 5 goals in 17 appearances.
Whilst assists and bringing others into play is important the main task for any Celtic striker will always be to score goals with 20 the benchmark for any Celtic forward.
If Fortune can deliver that I think that we can expect McDonald to hit between 25 and 30 injury permitting then we will have gone some way to making up for last season’s shortcomings.
The Champions League qualifying campaign starts in less than three weeks, forging a partnership between Fortune and McDonald will be key to our hopes of reaching the group stages of that competition for the fourth season running.
