Barry Bannan swoons over Celtic transfer tool up that consigns 'shaky' Starfelt moments to history

Celtic-daft Sheffield Wednesday captain Barry Bannan believes the Hoops will be better off defensively without “shaky” Carl Starfelt, insisting Maik Nawrocki is an upgrade in terms of his ability on the ball and believes new boy Gustaf Lagerbielke could be even better again.

The 33-year-old former Scotland midfielder, who was on the books at Parkhead as a kid, has never hidden his affection for his boyhood club and delivered his verdict on the rearguard summer recruitment. Starfelt was a mainstay alongside Cameron Carter-Vickers during Ange Postecoglou’s time at the club and enjoyed huge success.

However, the Swede departed for Spanish side Celta Vigo with Nawrocki arriving from Legia Warsaw and has featured in the opening two Scottish Premiership games of the season. He was joined this week by £3 million man Lagerbielke from Elfsborg and Bannan is excited by the new additions after fearing opposition sides were targeting Starfelt because he was right-footed playing on the left.

Bannan, speaking on the Unrestricted View Celtic podcast, said: “The way Celtic are playing building up from the back, I feel as if Starfelt gave you shaky moments. But with Nawrocki, I think he’s an upgrade on the ball straight away from what I’ve seen in the last couple of games. If Lagerbielke is even better on the ball then it’s only going to be good for Celtic because that’s where we kind of struggled in the games that let us down last season - when teams actually got the press right and they pressed Starfelt, because he was on his wrong side.

“It caused us problems and teams got on the front foot against us and if you’ve got someone on the other side as comfortable on the ball as Carter-Vickers then it kind of takes that plan away for