Ronny Deila, the Celtic manager, believes James Forrest can become a £10m-rated player once more, but he won't rush the winger back into first-team action before he is completely ready.
Forrest, who is available for tonight's League Cup tie against Partick Thistle but unlikely to be risked, has endured a difficult two years after sustaining a series of injuries. He has not featured in the first team since suffering a hamstring strain in the final minute of Celtic's 6-1 victory over Dundee United on August 16.
The forward has only made three first-team appearances since Deila became manager in the summer but the Norwegian has seen enough in training to believe he has a special player among his ranks.
"I can understand why they said he is a £10m player," said the Celtic manager. "He has things that very few others have in a one-versus-one situation, skill and speed.
"The last two weeks, especially, I've seen what he can do in training. I'm looking forward to seeing him on the pitch. He could play now but we want him as fit as possible, get him ready to be consistent in his play - and hopefully he will stay on the pitch for longer than three or four games. We want to see him playing at full potential, so we are taking it slow.
"I would rather wait and have him for a long run in the team, instead of just pushing to get him in for one match. That is my expectation, that he can stay on the pitch longer.
"I think he understands. There have been so many hard days for him in the last two years and while he really wants to come back, he knows everything has to be as perfect as possible on and off the pitch.
"He is crucial. Every manager would have a player like James, who can go one against one, can go past people, is quick, makes penetrating runs and creates things. I'm looking forward to seeing him in my team for a long time."
Celtic yesterday hosted a meeting of representatives from member clubs of the third subdivision of the European Club Assocation.
Clubs from Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Poland, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden and Wales met to discuss topics of common interest.
Key issues on the agenda were the Regional League concept, the UEFA Europa League access list and the solidarity payments concept.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article