20 minutes later, Alistair Johnston,<\/a> who was making his return from injury, also went down. It looked like a recurrence of his own hamstring problem, which had kept him out since August.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t ideal for Rodgers given the importance of upcoming fixtures \u2013 but one player\u2019s misfortune is always another\u2019s opportunity.<\/p>\n And for Johan Mjallby,<\/a> Johnny Kenny<\/a> showed something in his substitute appearance, which saw him essentially play the full match,<\/p>\n Johan Mjallby on Johnny Kenny for Celtic vs Sturm Graz<\/p>\n Kenny has very much broken into the Celtic first team through the back door.<\/p>\n Signed from Sligo Rovers in 2022, he has spent time out on loan at Queens Park and Shamrock Rovers before being bedded in by Rodgers.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Ex-Celtic kid Rocco Vata reveals telling-off from dad Rudi that he clamped with Championship winner<\/a><\/p>\n After returning to Celtic Park<\/a> in January, Kenny was given a run of substitute appearances, before scoring on his first start against Aberdeen at Pittodrie.<\/p>\n Despite the arrivals of Iheanacho and Shin Yamada, he has remained in first team contention and signed a new contract in the summer.<\/p>\n And Mjallby, speaking on TNT Sports\u2019 panel after the match, said that Kenny has \u2018everything\u2019 to become a good striker.<\/p>\n Speaking after the match, he said: \u201cI like this kid. I do. I think he\u2019s got everything in the bag to really become a good striker.<\/p>\n \u201cI know he\u2019s inexperienced, he\u2019s still making wrong decisions when it comes to his link-up play. But he\u2019s got it, with his movement in the box.<\/p>\n \u201cI think he\u2019s one of them, that if he scores one, he can come on leaps and bounds.\u201d<\/p>\n Kenny was given his first Ireland call-up in September,<\/a> but didn\u2019t feature in the games against the Netherlands and Armenia. <\/p>\n Should Iheanacho remain out injured, he could be set for a golden opportunity.<\/p>\n Celtic\u2019s striker situation<\/p>\n The striker situation at Celtic has been attrected attention since the departure of Kyogo Furuhash<\/a>i in January.<\/p>\n No direct replacement was signed for the Japanese hero, and to complicate matters further, Adam Idah was sold to Swansea<\/a> in the summer, seemingly against the wishes of the manager.<\/p>\n Targets such as Kasper Dolberg,<\/a> Louis Munteanu<\/a> and David Strelec<\/a> weren\u2019t signed in the summer transfer window, forcing the free signing of Iheanacho.<\/p>\n But if the Celtic board want any chance of keeping Rodgers beyond this season, they will need to dip back into the market \u2013 and more successfully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celtic\u2019s win over Sturm Graz didn\u2019t get off to the best of starts. The game had barely gotten…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[10043,218,32196,95231,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-223009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-celtic","tag-football","tag-johan-mjallby","tag-johnny-kenny","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Johnny](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2242489858-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n