THE players Celtic have been linked with since Brendan Rodgers revealed he wanted to bring in two new strikers during the January transfer window have created much excitement among fans of the Parkhead club.

A raft of centre forwards, including Jonathan Afolabi, Vakoun Issouf Bayo, Wilfried Bony, Andy Carroll, Aaron Connolly, Vincent Janssen, Shane Long and Timothy Weah, has been tipped to make moves to the Scottish champions in recent weeks as the rumour mill has gone into meltdown.

There is nothing quite like the prospect of a goal scorer arriving in the East End of Glasgow, where they have seen a few rather good ones over the years, for generating a sense of anticipation in the stands.

Yet, whether Bayo, the Ivorian who has been netting regularly for Dunajska Streda in Slovakia this season and who is the subject of a £1.75 million bid, or Weah, the Paris Saint-Germain youngster who is set to come in on loan until the end of the season, will prove worth all the fuss is quite another matter.

Celtic’s track record when it comes to strikers during the past decade has been hit and miss to say the least.

There have certainly been many spectacular successes – Moussa Dembele, Odsonne Edouard, Leigh Griffiths, Gary Hooper and Robbie Keane have all more than justified the fees spent and wages paid with their performances up front.

But there has been no shortage of failures as well – Amido Balde, Mohamed Bangura, Nadir Ciftci, Carlton Cole, Marc-Antoine Fortune, Diomansy Kamara, Colin Kazim-Richards, Daryl Murphy, Teemu Pukki, Morten Rasmussen and Stefan Scepovic were all unable to settle. Their mere mention sends a shiver down the spines of supporters.

So will Bayo turn out to be the new Dembele up front if he arrives? Or will he bomb like Bangura? Will Weah show the same predatory instincts as Hooper? Or will he flop like Scepovic? There are no guarantees either way.

There are a multitude in factors – staying injury free, being compatible with the Scottish game, having the ability to cope with the demands of representing such a well-supported club and getting regular first team opportunities among them - which determine whether an acquisition shines or struggles.

Talented individuals who have done well elsewhere before joining Celtic and flourished after leaving have toiled.

Fortune, who cost a cool £3.8 million back in 2009, is a perfect example. He is highly-regarded to this day at Utrecht, Nancy and West Bromwich Albion from his stints there. The French forward, while never a prolific marksman, excelled in the top flights in the Netherlands, France and England.

However, he lasted little over a year at Scotland and departed after Tony Mowbray, the manager who had signed him, was sacked.A few highlights aside, not least a screamer in the league game against Motherwell at Fir Park, he disappointed. He remains the 10th most expensive player in the Parkhead club’s history.

There were high hopes that Pukki, who cost £3 million from German club Schalke, would be able to fill the void left by Hooper, who had just moved on to Norwich City, when he arrived at Celtic in 2013.

The Finn showed occasional glimpses of why Neil Lennon had been keen to secure his services. But his introverted personality meant he was unable to integrate himself into the squad. He was loaned out to Brondby after a season and later moved to the Danish club permanently.

“He’s not the first person to come to Glasgow and not hit the ground running,” said Lennon. “He had a few injury problems and at a club like Celtic when you’re brought in for money you have to score goals. He’s very quiet. I don’t know if it was too big for him because he had been at Sevilla and at Schalke, so he had been at big clubs.”

The impact Pukki has made since joining Norwich on a free transfer in the summer – he has scored 16 goals to help the Carrow Road club move to second place in the Championship table – has shown he has no shortage of talent. He is currently the joint top scorer in the second tier down in England.

Scepovic, the Serbian who Ronny Deila bought for £2.3 million from Sporting Gijon in 2014, was another who failed to provide value for money. A return of six goals in 26 games was poor. Playing for, among others, Sampdoria, Club Brugge, Partizan Belgrade and Gijon failed to prepare him for what he encountered.

"Football in Scotland is very physical,” he said. “There is another issue which is also a problem - Celtic are the biggest team and everyone wants to scrap or win one point against us. We always have to score early because otherwise our rivals will just close the door on us.

"The referees have difficulty in removing their cards from their pockets. For it to be a yellow card, it has to be a strong tackle and the red card rarely comes out. It has been hard adapting.”

Rodgers has signed as many strikers in the two-and-a-half years he has been manager at Celtic as he is currently hoping to bring in and has done well with both of them.

Dembele, the £500,000 signing from Fulham in 2016, and Odsonne Edouard, his record £9 million capture from Paris Saint-Germain this summer, proved to be money very well spent indeed.

The former moved on Lyon in his homeland for £20 million on the last day of the summer transfer window after scoring 51 goals, including eight in Europe, in 94 games.

The business plan at Celtic – buying promising young foreign players, developing them over a period of time and selling them on for considerable profits – has proved enormously successful over the years.

The losses that have been made on the likes of Fortune, Pukki and Scepovic have been more than offset by the sales of Dembele, Fraser Forster, Hooper, Virgil van Dijk and Victor Wanyama.

But Rodgers is desperately short of options in the final third. He needs whoever else he brings to be more like Robbie Keane than Amido Balde if Celtic are to bounce back from their Glasgow derby defeat to Rangers on Saturday and win their eighth consecutive Scottish title in the months ahead.