Of all the players who are checking back in at Lennoxtown, the one I am most intrigued about is Bolingoli, who looked for all the world like someone who had blown it and was never going to be seen around the environs of Parkhead again.
But times change, and things change, and I wonder if he’s not going to be one of the principal people to benefit from the new broom which is about to start sweeping away the detritus of Lennon’s dire wasted year.
He signed Bolingoli but from the start made it clear that he barely knew what to do with the player. He played 28 games in all competitions in his first season at the club … he played one last season before the roof resoundingly fell on him.
His time at Celtic Park was dreadful, with the media out to pressure him from the off and the manager refusing to protect him.
Bolingoli never got a settling in period at Parkhead.
He was used as an attacking wing-back by a coaching staff which couldn’t seem to decide if he was a defender or a left midfielder; actually, I think he’s the latter and it would be interesting to see him deployed there.
The club threw him to the wolves over his little impromptu trip abroad, and he deserved every bit of anger that was flung at him.
But Celtic then went on to make the ill-fated Dubai trip, ostensibly for training, but they took over 50 staff there with them as well as a player who was on crutches, making it extremely hard to defend on that basis.
The reaction of Scottish football itself was equally venomous and even more hypocritical with the entire media and even the national coach rushing to embrace and rehabilitate Ibrox’s Covidiots, welcoming them back into the fold like long lost sons.
The club’s own defence of these players, and Patterson, in particular was nauseating.
I think it also indirectly led to the neddish behaviour of their fans in George Square.
These people have absolutely no right at all to start handing out lectures if we give this guy a shot, and like other players who we are essentially stuck with it would be ludicrous if he wasn’t to be.
This guy was signed for a lot of money, and there’s only so much we can afford to piss away because of the scandalous mismanagement of the last two years.