Daizen Maeda earns Celtic striker endorsement as Brendan Rodgers pulls out forward's CV

Daizen Maeda showed he can be Celtic’s main striker but Brendan Rodgers admitted the Japanese star would still prefer to wing it.

He stepped into the breach, after Kyogo Furuhashi’s shoulder issue and he netted a double in the 3-1 Premier Sports Cup win over Hibs. Rodgers has Kyogo and new signing Adam Idah finding his match sharpness and that allows Maeda to add another option to Rodgers’ impressive frontline. The Celtic manager said: “I know Daizen can play as a striker. I’ve said it before, he's played in the World Cup as a striker, so he should be able to play for Celtic as a striker if you need him.

“The last time he played as a striker for me, he scored a hat-trick in Yokohama and they were all fantastic goals. If you look at his instinct at the goals - the first one getting to the first post to finish and then the run in behind to penetrate the space, which is what I always want in my strikers. So, I know that he can play there, but I know his best position or his favourite position is on the side.”

Celtic have now won all three games this season and Rodgers waxed lyrically how good his team were against Hibs. He said:”I thought we were very, very good, as good as we've been. I know in some of the other games we've been excellent, but I thought we were very good from the start - the tempo and the speed in the game.

“Everything that we wanted out of the game was there. We had to deal with direct balls from throw-ins and that side of it, but apart from that we were never really in any trouble. We scored three very good goals and had other moments where we just didn't quite finish, but overall I'm so pleased with the performance.”

Nicolas Kuhn was another who shone for Celtic. He also got on the scoresheet and got