John Kennedy believes that Vasilis Barkas is due some slack after being dropped into Celtic’s worst season in a decade.
Back in August attention turned to the Greek keeper when Celtic’s hopes of recruiting Fraser Forster were ended.
Scott Bain was the only first team keeper on the pre-season trip to France with Barkas making his debut away to Kilmarnock on August 9 just before the Boli Bolingoli scandal broke.
In his fourth Celtic match he played in the ill-fated Champions League defeat from Ferencvaros and despite a run of eight successive victories after that grim night the problems that kicked in through the autumn can be traced back to the visit from the Hungarian’s.
Barkas has rotated the goalkeeping slot with Scott Bain and Conor Hazard, tonight at home to St Johnstone he’ll make his first appearance since mid-January.
Only David Turnbull and Moi Elyounoussi of Celtic’s summer signings have shown any sort of form with Kennedy highlighting the issues faced by foreign arrivals during a pandemic.
The Interim boss told the Daily Record:
Scott Bain picked up a finger injury against Rangers which will mean he’ll miss the remaining two games. Obviously Barkas has come in as a new signing. We’ve found, speaking to a lot of people at different clubs, it’s been really challenging for the foreign lads this year.
It’s easy for us, we are all based at home and we go home to our families every night — we’re just used to the environment but, for the foreign lads it’s been coming into a kind of alien environment with the restrictions also, and it’s been really challenging for a lot of them. Again, we have got to take all that into account.
He’s obviously one who we’ve had high hopes for and maybe his form didn’t quite hit the heights we expected but again we’ve got to work on that, develop that in him.
He’s now had one year exposure to that, he realises what the standards are. And obviously with Scott being injured it gives him that opportunity to come in for the last two games.
He wants to finish the season well enough and then attack pre-season knowing what’s coming this time. Barkas will play tomorrow night, that’s a given.
I’ll look at the game at the weekend, but he will certainly play against St Johnstone. Hopefully that can get him back in the groove. He’s been training and even the training has been different for him, all different to what he’s used to.
So he’s had to adapt to that. We’ve seen improvements in training — so this is a good opportunity for him to come in and perform again.
I think you’ve got to have a bit of empathy with him in terms of understanding the situation he found himself in. Coming in to a huge challenge in itself, a club like Celtic, and obviously the pressure that was on this season even before he started.
Barkas has been linked with loan moves back to Greece but like many decisions it looks like that will be the call of a new manager.