Celtic hero could head for Birmingham City transfer exit as 'doubt' cast on future after friendly omission
Birmingham City have the former Celtic striker on their books.
A Celtic favourite is reportedly edging towards an exit at English Championship side Birmingham City.
Kyogo scored 85 goals in 165 appearances for the Premiership champions and helped the club win nine major honours. He left in January 2025 for Rennes and his subsequent move to Birmingham City after that spell went awry hasn’t totally worked out. There were exit links in the winter window and those have remerged with the summer window in full swing.
Reports down south though have claimed ‘Chris Davies has cast doubt over the Birmingham City futures of Kai Wagner and Kyogo Furuhashi after leaving the pair out of Wednesday’s friendly at Solihull Moors.’ Neither of them were left out due to injury or fitness related issues and their situations will soon become clearer.
Why did Kyogo miss Birmingham City’s latest friendly?
Speaking on why both the Hoops favourite and left-back Wagner were left out of a friendly this week with lower league opposition, Blues boss and ex-Parkhead coach Davies said to Birmingham Live: “Kai and Kyogo, things will be clearer with those two in the next couple of days,” said Davies. “There’s been a few things happening in the background and that will become clearer in the next 48 hours but tonight wasn’t a night to include them.”
Former Blues forward Kevin Phillips recently discussed the possibility of an exit from the English Championship for the ex-Celtic striker. He said: “I’ve always liked Kyogo, there’s something there, but we just haven’t really seen it on a regular basis.
“There’s no good saying we keep waiting and waiting; he needs to perform. So if he stays, he needs to hit the ground running. If he doesn’t, I don’t think there’ll be too many Blues fans kicking the door down to say stay if Birmingham were to cash in, whether he went back to Celtic or went somewhere else.
What has Martin O’Neill said about Kyogo returning to Celtic?
“So I would give him the benefit of the doubt and let him start the season. If it doesn’t quite work out, then maybe look to potentially get him out on loan or move him on before the window shuts.”
Kyogo was linked with a Celtic move in January but it never came to pass. Addressing the speculation then, O’Neill said: “I would have said that would probably be unlikely. I think there is a viewpoint that he wants to really prove himself at Birmingham, which is no surprise. Doing plenty of work on it, seriously and I know that’s a big generalisation. We are doing that and hopefully try and get a few players in. But there’s a lot of work going on at the moment. We are well aware that we have to supplement the squad.”