We all love Emilio - but Izzy the answer for Celtic?

After a trying week for Celtic, one piece of news with the feelgood factor was the return of Emilio Izaguirre as cover for Kieran Tierney at left-back.

It's not at all hard to love Izzy and most fans do.

A player who is never gave less than his all (as he noted himself) those years of flying down the left wing have not been forgotten by the fans and he left to real affection and well-wishing from the supporters.

That's all well and good and I'm happy for him as he seems so pleased to have made his return.

From a football point of view, however, I'm not sure quite what this tells us about recruitment policy at the club.

Those who remember Izzy's early days will recall the expectation that those exciting early displays would lead to big-money bids from English clubs (with speculation that Manchester United were considering a move).

But, such is the power of social media that before long the wise amongst us were mostly agreeing online that there was a problem with his positional sense.

For my part, I predicted that Izzy would leave as, fine player that he is, I couldn't see him fitting into Brendan Rodgers's style of play.

His running and crossing can be excellent - he could easily have found a place in Martin O'Neill's Celtic teams - but I didn't think his touch was quite right for the quick passing that Brendan favours.

So, what has changed?

Was it a blunder to let him go and did Brendan really rate him and want to keep him? (He will have made good money in Saudi Arabia and good luck to him for that.)

Or is there more to the move than meets the eye?

Calvin Miller has looked promising but, at 20, is perhaps not considered ready to be considered as reliable cover for that 21-year-old veteran Kieran.

That's fair enough and if the Izzy move is to take pressure off Calvin while Kieran remains as our left-back, then we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

But let's be clear about something.

Having Izzy supporting Kieran is fine. Bringing back a popular player because, for example, Kieran might be sold is not fine at all.

We can all make mistakes and reversing a bad decision (if that's what letting Izzy go was) is smarter than ploughing on, rather than admitting a mistake.

But two days after Brendan expressed his displeasure at missing out on John McGinn, there is room for scepticism as to whether bringing Izzy back is a move that Brendan really wanted or an admission that Peter Lawwell and the board have no intention of supporting Brendan in terms of developing the squad.

So, who signed Izzy - Brendan or Peter?

And, if the answer is the latter, then no amount of love for Izzy is going to bring us much joy in the time to come.
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