IT was good to bump into an old face in Nicky Hammond when Celtic played Lazio in Glasgow. He was a player when I was assistant manager at Swindon, and not only was he a good goalkeeper, but he was a good lad too.

He loves it at Celtic, and although we didn’t discuss transfer plans, I know that he and Neil Lennon will be working hard to identify potential recruits at the minute with both January and the summer windows in mind.

It’s all changed a fair bit from my days in charge of Celtic. I had scouts, of course, but you would go to a lot of games yourself, and you didn’t have the technology that Nicky and Neil will be using as they whittle down their list of targets.

There was myself and John Kelman who dealt with the top end, and then we had scouts underneath, and I got more involved in that side of things when I went on to become chief scout under Tommy Burns.

My job was going about the country and Europe scouting, so I know how it works, but Nicky doesn’t need me to tell him what the top priority should be in January – a striker.

Regardless of whether Leigh Griffiths returns and is back to his sharpest or not, I think there is a call for at least one and maybe two strikers to be brought in.

In every other position, there are two or three options, whereas Odsonne Edouard is being asked to play an awful lot of minutes up top, and often on his own.

The game against Motherwell was a case in point. I’m sure Neil would have loved to have given him a rest with the team two goals to the good, but he played the full 90 minutes.

Any kind of injury to him and Celtic would be in a tricky position.