Before yesterday’s game, my good friend James Forrest wrote on The Celtic Blog, a list of contenders for our player of the season this year. Reading through them there was an argument for them all, except for me, perhaps one… Jota.
There is no doubting his skill or ability, technically he is the most gifted player in the country and on his day he can do things that most ‘normal’ players wouldn’t even dream of.
The problem last season for him was the consistency that he often lacked. Too often he would drift out of games and fail to track back causing gaps. In some ways yesterday Ange felt he was still guilty of this.
Today the Daily Record reported Ange’s comments to Sky Sports, “Good goal, he’s obviously got that in his locker where he can take people on, he’s one of the ones, I thought he started brightly but I thought he was one of the main culprits to why we fell away a bit before half time, just being wasteful in possession.”
However, despite this, to me, Jota delivered exactly what we needed.
Someone to take the game by the scruff of the neck and have a go. With sublime quality in the finish, it’s clear he has what it takes to be the star man among many contenders at Celtic.
More importantly, yesterday gave us a glimpse that he wants to be the main man in this team too.