Celtic's Yang Hyun-jun Shines Before Asian Games Departure

Celtic will be without Yang Hyun-jun for some of their biggest games of the season. On this evidence, they will feel every minute of it.

The 24-year-old South Korean winger struck the winner in Paisley as Celtic came from behind to beat St Mirren 2-1, scoring for the second game in a row before packing his bags for Japan and the Asian Games.

He leaves with his manager both delighted and uneasy.

“We are going to miss him. He’s in really fine form at the moment,” Martin O’Neill admitted, fully aware of what is walking out the door for the next few weeks.

St Mirren strike first, Celtic rocked

St Mirren started like a side chasing the top of the William Hill Premiership – because at half-time, that’s exactly where they were heading.

They went in front midway through the first half. Liam Scales was penalised for handball inside the box and Nikolas Agrafiotis buried the resulting penalty. Celtic were rattled. For a spell of 10 to 15 minutes, O’Neill’s side were second best all over the pitch, the manager later conceding they had been “well and truly second best”.

St Mirren were aggressive, on the front foot, and relentless in their attacking intent. They finished the night having registered 19 shots on target, a remarkable figure against a side with Celtic’s resources.

Craig McLeish’s team pressed high, passed with purpose and looked comfortable in possession. That approach would cost them later, but it also gave them a platform to trouble the champions throughout.

Celtic’s response: Scales and Yang turn it around

Whatever was said in the Celtic dressing room at the break hit the mark.

They came out with a different energy. Quicker to challenges, sharper in possession, more decisive in both boxes. Six minutes into the second half, the comeback began. Scales, at fault for the penalty, atoned with a powerful header to level the game.

The equaliser shifted the mood. Celtic began to carry more threat on the break, and the game opened up into a tense, stretched contest.

The decisive moment arrived midway through the second half. St Mirren, committed to building from the back, were punished. Camilo Duran robbed Ryan Carr about 10 yards inside the Celtic half, and from that turnover the visitors sprang forward. Yang finished the counter-attack, capping his night – and his current Celtic spell – with a clinical winner.

O’Neill loved the goal, but not just for its quality.

“He’s in great form and he’ll work for you going backwards. He doesn’t mind doing the hard graft,” the Celtic manager said, underlining why Yang’s absence will bite in the coming weeks.

Ice pack, Asian Games and national service

There was a brief scare when Yang left the field with an ice pack on his leg, but O’Neill quickly played down any injury fears.

“He’s OK. If he’d got up a little bit earlier, I think maybe we might have continued with him. But he looked shaken up a bit, so we took him off,” he explained.

The real concern is not his fitness, but his availability.

Yang now flies to Japan for the Asian Games, ruling him out of the midweek trip to St Johnstone, two matches against Rangers and Celtic’s Europa League opener against Ferencvaros. For a player O’Neill describes as “in really fine form”, the timing is brutal.

There is more at stake for Yang than just club fixtures. O’Neill laid it out bluntly: “If they don’t win the tournament, then he has to do (national) service. I hope they do win it.”

So Celtic lose a match-winner at the exact moment his international future reaches a critical point.

McLeish stands by bold St Mirren

On the other side, McLeish walked away with nothing on the scoreboard and plenty to cling to in terms of performance.

“I thought there were so many good parts about our play,” the St Mirren head coach said. He knew exactly where the damage had been done too.

Their commitment to a possession-based game brought both promise and pain. “Probably the little bit of frustration was when we were a wee bit loose in possession. The first half, Celtic’s chances come from us giving the ball away at times when we should be more secure on it. And then even the second goal, that comes from us not being secure on the ball.”

The key word for McLeish is bravery. He refuses to criticise his players for mistakes that stem from the style he demands.

“We can’t then turn round and have a pop at the boys for that. We’re asking them to play, we’re asking them to be brave on the ball. We just need to keep doing it better at times, we need to keep building on it.”

Even at 2-1 down, St Mirren refused to go long or retreat into themselves. They kept playing, kept pushing, and carved out some of their best chances in the closing stages.

“Throughout the night we carried a threat. Even when we go 2-1 down, we show so much bravery and personality to keep going and keep playing,” McLeish said. “We probably have our strongest spell of the game and create some really good chances, probably unlucky not to take one of them.”

The frustration cut through his final assessment. “It probably shows where we’re at: we’re so disappointed with not coming away with anything.”

A win, a warning, and a looming gap

For Celtic, this was a hard-earned victory, wrestled from a team that refused to back down and pushed them to the edge. It also felt like a warning: life without Yang, even temporarily, will not be simple.

He leaves on a high, with a “brilliant goal” as O’Neill put it, and a clear imprint on how Celtic attack and defend from the flanks.

Now the question hangs over Glasgow: as the fixtures pile up and Rangers loom on the horizon, who steps into the space he leaves behind?