An unfortunate injury early in the season put Marc-Antoine Fortuné's Celtic career on hold somewhat - not that the critical Scottish media take that into consideration when constantly slating him as a waste of money - but now that the French forward has racked up some game time his critics in the fourth estate are starting to worry. 
says Marc-Antoine Fortuné
His two goals in Sunday's 4-1 victory over St Johnstone at McDiarmid Park were just the icing on the cake after the player produced a magnificent all-round performance as he continues to look more like the force that boss Tony Mowbray promised he would be.
As he looked forward to meeting and training with Morten Rasmussen at Lennoxtown yesterday Marco insisted that signing a quality striker such as the Danish international was a necessary step in the battle for the league title. He looks upon the arrival of the ex-Brondby forward as a reinforcement, a comrade in arms to aid the cause, rather than as a threat to the incumbent strike force.
"It is always good to have competition for places at a football club and I think this player will be a good addition to the squad," said Fortuné. "We are waiting for him to arrive and look forward to seeing what he can bring to the side. With Chris Killen leaving to join Middlesbrough earlier in the transfer window, we only have three strikers at the club just now; Georgios Samaras, Scott McDonald and me."
"Every big club needs to have four strikers and Celtic is a big club." said the Hoops number 10. "Our aim this season is to win the league and get back into the Champions League. Of course, we need to keep performing like we did against St Johnstone on Sunday to do that. But to play in Europe next season we will need to have four strikers."
Rasmussen goes straight into the squad for tonight's game against an on-form Hibernian side at Celtic Park and it is thought that he'll have some part to play in the proceedings but following their success on Sunday manager Mowbray is likely to start with Fortuné and Georgios Samaras up front.
"The first half against St Johnstone was okay, but not the best." said Fortuné. "In the second half we played much better. We must start off the game against Hibs the way we finished off the game at McDiarmid Park. I know St Johnstone lost a player at the start of the second half and that made our job easier, but I think that we would still have won the game anyway because of the way we were playing."
"It was no surprise that we scored a lot of goals against St Johnstone because we have been creating a lot of chances." continued the striker. "We did so against Rangers and then again against Falkirk last week, but didn't score. It will be difficult for us to score against Hibs as they are a good team but, if we play like we did against St Johnstone and take our chances when they come along, then I think that we will be able to do so."
"It was a very good victory against St Johnstone." concluded Fortuné. "But we have to win every game that we play if we want to win the league and we have to forget about the weekend and look at winning the Hibs game. The manager wants us to perform in every game that we play in. He asked us to give him more at half-time against St Johnstone and we did that in the second half. I think that the win at the weekend was good for us psychologically as a team as it took us closer to Rangers in the league. It was also good for myself and Georgios to score goals. We are looking forward to the Hibs game. It will be fun."