Shaun Maloney? Aye, awright!

Rarely can a player who has achieved so relatively little in his career have sparked such emotion as Shaun Maloney.

In his first spell as a Celtic player, he started only 69 games between 2001 and 2007. Given his first opportunity under Martin O’Neill, his undoubted talent looked likely to give rise only to another of those tales of endless frustration: an if-only player who had huge ability but would never quite make it.

Gordon Strachan’s arrival at Celtic appeared to have been Maloney’s salvation. With a genuine training ground coach who helps players develop their full potential, Shaun was reaping the rewards, with performances that would attract the attention of suitors in the Premiership.

That the player would repay the club’s faith in him through serious injury with jumping ship at the first opportunity was objectionable. That he should choose Aston Villa, to join the manager who rarely played him at Celtic – and who had a record of being unable to properly utilise similar players of the quality of Lubo Moravcik and Juninho – was unpardonable folly.

If ever there was a move that benefited none of the parties, it was Shaun Maloney’s wasted 19 months in Birmingham. In fact the only beneficiary of the process was Aiden McGeady, who was given a free run at making his own the wide left position that Maloney had previously occupied.

So much for the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Shaun is back and, as the fates would deign it, looks to have become an irreplaceable part of the team as suddenly as he left it in 2007.

After two league matches, Celtic looked rusty, lacking dynamism and short of ideas around their opponents’ penalty boxes. An injury to Scott McDonald came after some seriously under-par performances that looked likely to call into question the wisdom of improving his deal after just one season.

The image of our most dependable striker, Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, being carried from the pitch against Falkirk was enough to leave thousands of Celtic supporters looking to each other with the same thought in mind: “What are we going to do for goals now?”

In the circumstances, that was an immense test for Shaun Maloney as he was called to the field and one that may be recalled for months, if not years, to come when assessing his place in Celtic.

Had Maloney flopped, they would have heard the catcalls as far as his birthplace in Sarawak. Instead, everything that had appeared to be wrong with Celtic in the past two games suddenly appeared to be right. The movement, the speed on the ball, the ability to release a pass at just the right time were all there. And more than that: somehow the same thing seemed to click with Georgios Samaras, with Scott Brown, with Aiden McGeady and Shunsuke Nakamura all at the same time.

Partly that might be due to general improvements in the team, partly because Falkirk approached the game with their usual admirable commitment to passing football.

But the images that will most commonly be recalled are of Maloney reviving a team that just might have looked to be in trouble had things gone another way.

Maybe he was just lucky – that’s twice this week – but there will be no excuses for him failing to learn his lesson this time.

Shaun, this time stick to where you’re wanted and best off!






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