Pundit Brands Luis Palma Criticism “Extremely harsh”

Scottish Football pundit Marvin Bartley thinks the wealth of criticism currently surrounding Celtic winger Luis Palma is ‘extremely harsh’.

It comes after the Honduran returned to the Hoops’ lineup for their Premier Sports Cup quarter-final tie with Falkirk at the weekend.

Brendan Rodgers’ men ran out eventual 5-2 victors, but Palma’s performance was majorly underwhelming.

The wide man was continually ineffective and frustrated fans with a sub-par display.

With Celtic 2-1 down, Rodgers hooked Palma on the hour-mark for Yang Hyun-jun, who came on and made somewhat of a positive impact on proceedings.

Palma has received vast criticism for his performance against Falkirk. Michael Stewart thinks his Hoops career is all but over, but Bartley disagrees.

The former Queen of the South manager thinks it is difficult to say the 24-year-old is done in green and white off the back of his poor showing against the Bairns.

“I think to say someone is done is extremely harsh,” he said (Clyde 1 Superscoreboard via RecordSport).

“It is not very easy to come in and try to impact a Game.

“One thing I would say, I think when you play for Celtic Football Club and you play Falkirk – regardless of how well they are doing – they are a Championship team. So when you do come into that team, you have to be better than Falkirk.

“I just felt that some of the players that came in struggled too much. You are in a situation now that you would be nervous putting three of four of them in, because their standards have to be higher outside of a few.

“But, no, you can’t say somebody is done off the back of that.”

Boss Rodgers admitted after Sunday’s match that he made too many changes to his starting 11 and that the poor performance for the first hour was on him.

Palma, though, was noticeably substandard and did not do anything noteworthy in his hour on the pitch.

Nicolas Kuhn, Daizen Maeda, James Forrest, and perhaps now Yang are all ahead of him in the wing pecking order.

Celtic rejected some late approaches for the former Aris Thessaloniki man in the summer transfer window, but perhaps a move elsewhere in January would be ideal for Palma.