Given that Celtic have yet to lose any of the 38 domestic games where Cameron Carter-Vickers and Carl Starfelt have started together as a defensive duo, any new centre-back arriving at the club has a job on his hands to disrupt the first-choice status of their partnership.
Indeed, with the likes of Moritz Jenz and Stephen Welsh already in reserve, simply edging to the front of the queue to play back-up to Ange Postecoglou’s preferred pairing is a task itself. For Yuki Kobayashi though, the early signs are promising.
The Japanese defender was handed a debut in Wednesday night’s 4-0 win over St Mirren, with Postecoglou giving him the nod to slot in beside Starfelt in the absence of Carter-Vickers, who was still nursing a Hampden hangover in the form of some minor soreness brought on by the national stadium’s swampy surface.
Starfelt was the best placed to judge his new partner’s performance on the night, and in accord with the vast majority of the Celtic Park crowd, he was suitably impressed by Kobayashi’s display.
He was calm on the ball and displayed a good range of passing, pre-requisites to carry out the role successfully in Postecoglou’s system. Encouragingly, he also showed an appetite for the baser aspects of the Scottish game, standing up to the physical challenge posed by the twin units of the St Mirren attack in Jonah Ayunga and Curtis Main.
Whether he can put pressure on Carter-Vickers and Starfelt in time remains to be seen, but even though they are now in direct competition for places, the latter of those was magnanimous enough to shower praise on Kobayashi for the way he handled his introduction to the Scottish game.
“I thought he played really well, it was a good debut for him,” Starfelt said.
“He was cool on the ball and he won his duels. He was really good.
“Was it a welcome to Scotland? Yes. That is what a lot of the games are like here. It’s very physical.
“I think he did really well and he showed he can handle it. I didn’t give him too much advice, just the normal stuff like getting to know each other and knowing how close to be to each other to help each other out. He did very well.
“The competition for places is really good, it pushes everyone. It keeps everyone on their toes and on edge, while developing their games.
“The rest is up to the coach.”
Far from feeling threatened by the increased pressure for places in his area of the pitch, Starfelt says that the presence of that competition is one of the key components to Celtic’s dominance.
“I feel we are strong at the moment,” he said. “It was nice to get a clean sheet [against St Mirren], especially for the defenders. But I feel we are strong [all over the pitch] and we have a lot of competition in the squad.
“It’s not easy for the coach, I guess, but that’s how it should be at a club like Celtic. We need to keep going. We have a lot to play for in the league so we need to be at it in every game.
“There is no time to relax. The competition makes it even more the case as you need to be at it in training. It’s a good thing. I don’t feel like we need extra motivation as everyone is at it anyway.
“We are ambitious, and we want to develop as a team. We need to be at it all the time.
“I feel we have a really strong squad and a lot of competition for places. I really feel we are in a good place to fight for all competitions.”
The next of those on Celtic’s schedule is the Scottish Cup, as they kick off their campaign with a tie against Greenock Morton at Celtic Park tomorrow.
On the face of it, it would appear a certain home banker, but as any Celtic supporter who still shudders at the distant memory of Dougie Imrie – now Morton manager - scoring a winning penalty for the Cappielow side on this ground in the League Cup back in 2013 will testify, there is no such thing.
Starfelt too scoffs at the notion that complacency would be allowed to set in against the Championship outfit.
“No,” he said. “Because of the fact that it’s the cup and you only have one chance. If you have been in football for a while, you know anything can happen.
“It doesn’t really matter what league you come from. You really need to be focused and if you relax even 10 percent then anything can happen.
“That will be the message we get before the game and all of the players know it.
“I hope – no, I know – there is no risk of complacency.”
