Dedryck Boyata welcomes new Celtic teammate Marvin Compper – but won’t be giving up his place

DEDRYCK BOYATA claims he is focused and settled at Celtic, yet at the same time admits he is unsure of his future.

There is a clear contradiction in the statements, but the 27-year-old Belgian is unapologetic.

Welcome, he says, to the world of a top-level professional footballer.

More specifically, to the lot of a player who is welcoming a rival to his position into the club, at the same time as he is attempting to step up his efforts to take part in the biggest event of his career.

“I am looking forward to working with Marvin Compper (the new £1m buy from Red Bull Leipzig),” said the Celt ahead of the Hoops’ trip to their Dubai winter training camp.

“He is an experienced player, 32 years old with a cap for Germany. So I am sure he is a very good player.

“But I want to stay in the team because I have the World Cup coming up in the summer with Belgium. This could be a very big six months for me.

“In any team, though, you need a bit of freshness. It is almost impossible to play every game at 100% fit.

“So we need players to help us.

“Of course, for myself, I want to play every game now until the end of the season.

“I know, though, that I have had examples before when I’ve been injured, or my body just couldn’t cope, and I’ve had to come out of the team. So new defenders can only help us there.

“When people say we need new centre-backs, I can’t change that.

“Big clubs want to win everything. It is not just the staff. It’s the players and the fans too – they want everything, so they always want to change something.

“As a player, I can’t affect that. I want to be on the pitch and there’s only one guy you need to convince – the manager.

“For that, you need to work hard every day. In terms of bringing in new players, it’s
the same at every club. It’s just the way it is today.

“Looking ahead, you just never know what might happen. I’m not going to lie to you.

“At the moment, I feel really focused and settled. I’m looking forward to 2018. I want to start it positively and continue until the end of the season.”

It is the kind of positive thinking which, Boyata argues, helped him use last January’s winter-training camp as the springboard to a successful year.

“If you look back at January 2017 until today, it has been a great 12 months,” he said.

“Going into the last winter break, I had only played one game that season, so it was a bit of an unsettling period for me.

“So I thought January was the time to go and seek football somewhere else.

“But it never got to the point where I sat down with the manager to discuss what to do.

“It was the January transfer window and we had a training camp out in Dubai.

“I didn’t know what would happen from day to day, but I had to train. I did whatever I was told to do.

“I’ve always tried to improve my game, especially as a defender. I watch games non-stop and try to see what I could have done better.

“It is not so much a physical thing. I am not going to build up big muscles.

“But in the games, you are trying to stay focused to not make any mistakes in 90 minutes. Basically, just to defend better.

“And when we got back from Dubai, I was playing.

“As a footballer you want to play games. So when I wasn’t, of course, I was thinking about going elsewhere.

“To get to the next step, you need to know what the exact situation is.

“Thankfully, I didn’t get to that point.”