A lot has been made lately of Jozo Simunovic – The Big Bosnian had a horror show against Hearts and he seems to be getting the backlash of that game due to his high profile errors.
However, I’ve not seen calls for Boyata to be sold nearly as much, in fact, it seems fans are more split on Jozo than Boyata which to me is hard to gather when you consider Boyata is always good for a mistake or two. I can understand that Simunovic is not the best on the ball, but he is a defender, his job is to defend.
People seem to forget he’s only 23 and it wasn’t too long ago we were overjoyed that his deal to Torino collapsed and it wasn’t too long ago we saw him and Sviatchenko as the future of our defence. Erik in my opinion, although, quite slow like Jozo is a good defender, like Jozo and it seems to me he is being sold due to injury. If that is the case then where is the clamour to see Tom Rogic leave Celtic?
Erik Sviatchenko had that one high profile mistake against Rangers and I don’t remember seeing him too much after that, even when he was fit and you see Jozo Simunovic has been on the bench lately and Boyata has still made mistakes. Let’s not forget Simunovic committed his future to this club while it seems Boyata is stalling on a new deal.
I wouldn’t say we ever adequately replaced Virgil van Dijk and Denayer, no matter how good we were last season, we’ve never been entirely trusting of our central defenders like we were those two. To progress our team to the next level, we need a better quality defender than Boyota and perhaps a defender who isn’t such an injury risk as Simunovic.
It seems to me Rodgers does want to keep players to the highest standard, but he’s letting Boyata away with mistakes nearly every week, in my opinion, if one of our central defenders are going to leave alongside Sviatchenko, then it should be Dedryk.
We should build the future of our defence around Jozo as he’s still young and already a brilliant out and out defender who can develop other sides of his game under Rodgers. We’d be mad to sell him!
Matthew Magee
