Jonny Hayes has barely featured since signing for Celtic in the summer and could fall further down the pecking order.
It didn’t take long for Jonny Hayes to go from Celtic’s marquee summer signing to their forgotten man.
Since moving from last season’s closest challengers Aberdeen for £1.3 million, as reported by the Evening Express, the 30-year-old has started just three of Celtic’s 11 Scottish Premiership games and has been left out of all the club’s Champions League fixtures in 2017/18.
Perhaps Celtic would never have signed the left-winger if they knew that Manchester City would permit Patrick Roberts to return to Parkhead for another loan spell. Either way, Hayes now finds himself falling to third place in the pecking order – behind Roberts and Scott Sinclair.
And with 18-year-old Michael Johnston seemingly set to become the latest highly-rated homegrown prospect to make his name in Celtic’s first-team, Hayes could find himself becoming more and more redundant in green and white.
It’s a measure of Johnston’s talent that, after just two appearances for the senior side, Celtic sought to tie him down until 2020 amid interest from Premier League champions Chelsea, as reported by the Daily Record.
The Glasgow-born speedster has since made one more appearance for Celtic’s first-team under Brendan Rodgers, starting the 1-1 draw with Kilmarnock at the weekend in a much changed starting XI.
And it appears only a matter of time before Johnston appears more regularly on the Parkhead pitch. By which point Hayes could find himself in danger of being overtaken again in Celtic’s pecking order.
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