Sydney van Hooijdonk set Celtic benchmark he must achieve amid transfer murmur as SPFL near miss revealed

He almost arrived in Scotland wearing green and white colours before - and Sydney van Hooijdonk has been told Celtic triumphs can be clinched with a simple step.

The striker is currently on the Bologna fringes and was heavily linked with Brendan Rodgers' side in the summer. Those transfer whispers have started to rise again as the Premiership champions face a January conundrum of both Oh and Kyogo heading for the Asian Cup. That would leave Celtic short on strikers and Falkirk midfielder Stephen McGinn believes they have to seek reinforcement.

During his time at Hibs in the Covid-season of 2020/21, McGinn was a player-coach, and claims that the forward then with NAC Breda was one boss Jack Ross could have picked up, but eventually van Hooijdonk was passed up. McGinn revealed to Go Radio: "I think Celtic need to do business with Oh and Kyogo potentially not being available. He's a name, the year I was at Hibs in the Covid season, I had a split-role with my relationship with Jack Ross doing player-coaching and he's one that came up in the recruitment meeting.

"You are going through all them and you watch and there was no doubt he'd scored a number of goals for NAC Breda. We weren't able to fly out to see them play, the outlay on it was quite big, Kevin Nisbet had just signed in the summer and he was flying.

"I think the circumstances, had it maybe been in a normal season, he would have been someone we might have gone for. But you are worried about bringing someone into the country, can't go out with any of the boys, need to stay in a flat, go from training ground to flat, the difficulties of that. Now in hindsight you see the success, and wish you had just done it."

Pierre van Hooijdonk, his dad, was a prolific Celtic