When I wrote my Celtic “Player of the Year” piece the other day, I left Jota to near the end, not because I don’t rate him but because I do rate him, and very highly.
Nobody who read that article could have been in the slightest doubt that he was going to appear in it at some point, so I left him until late because I knew I could get away with it.
In that piece, I said that part of the thing with Jota is that he drifts in games.
He ebbs and flows. When he’s focussed and determined he shows us a player of such panache and genius that you wonder what the Hell he’s doing in the SPFL.
At other times he gives the ball away easily, runs into defender and mis-places passes.
It is part rustiness and part because he’s still a guy learning his game.
If he was already doing everything right we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near him.
Yesterday he showed us both sides of it, and no greater a person than Ange himself said so. We saw the wasteful and maddening … and we also saw the dazzling genius. It was that which came through most over the course of the game.
We got the full repertoire of tricks and flicks and feints yesterday.
The frustrating moments weren’t going to cancel them out completely. But for that scorching goal he scored though, we might have been a little frustrated overall … Ange certainly was.
For all that, we can all see quite clearly what we’ve got here, and that this is a fine player who is going to be a nightmare for other teams to cope with. And as he grows in confidence, and learns those lessons which make him a better player we’ll see as he develops into the kind that we will face a genuine fight to hang onto.
With The Season About To Start, Which Celtic Star Will Rise Above The Rest?
It’s the nature of the beast so to speak for that position in the team not even the legend that was Jinky often had an unblemished match,just hope he can eclipse your namesake in terms of goals. Is that not food for thought
When everyone was pondering and deliberating on which one of our two great loanees was our first choice, if we only had one choice of signing one of them, I unequivocally said it had to be Jota. The reason being was that he had the ‘x’ factor, he had that touch of genius that could swing a game in our favour and a 6M was an absolute bargain. I was thinking more of CL games at the time. I guarantee however that Jota will be attracting clubs all over Europe and that he will fetch north of 20M when he does go. I don’t want to see him leaving….ever, but some things are just inevitable. He is brilliant, he is a star, and he will get even better now that he is no longer a loan player, he is settled, and with all the uncertainties of his future removed from his psyche, the best is yet to come.
30m