Daizen Maeda has emerged as perhaps the most critical weapon in Rodgers’ developing Celtic arsenal.

One of the truly impressive things about yesterday’s game was the way the Japanese players are almost back to reading each other’s minds, and the phenomenal performances of all three of them, particularly the front two. A huge part of the reason for the size of the win and the overall standard of the football was due to their contributions.

We’re incredibly lucky to have these three exceptional players at the club at the same time. While a lot of attention is focused on Kyogo for his outstanding ability to score in big matches, more and more, I’ve come to believe that it’s Daizen Maeda who is central to the way we play and our potency on the left-hand side of the pitch.

If you look at the start he’s had this season, it’s obvious that Rodgers has him doing some things that are a little bit different. He’s cutting inside more often, getting clear-cut goal-scoring opportunities, and putting the ball in the net on a more regular basis. But if you go back three seasons, even to when he signed in the first place, you can see that there probably isn’t a more dangerous player over that running distance, which makes or breaks games, than this guy.

For a start, the Ibrox club’s most potent attacking player is—and has been—Tavernier for years now. We’ve all commented that just fielding Daizen in games against Tavernier completely nullifies his attacking threat.

The fact that Tavernier plays so far up the pitch affords Daizen the opportunities to run in behind him and use that blistering pace, making it almost impossible for Tavernier to catch him. But what we saw yesterday, in little moments, wasn’t so much the speed of his feet but the speed of Daizen Maeda’s thoughts when going up against this guy.

It may be that he has some psychological edge over Tavernier because he’s so consistently destroyed him in these matches but there was a new element to it yesterday; he was able to catch him out so often in those little 50/50 moments, finding those extra inches to the player’s left or right, or nicking behind him to take the ball. It happened over and over again.

One of the things that summed up the game for me was when he had the ball at one end of the pitch, the chance broke down, and he sprinted all the way to the other end to make a tackle. Kyogo did that during the game, too. I think Idah popped up once in Celtic’s penalty area to clear a ball, but Maeda does this consistently, game after game, and he runs so much and covers such a distance that I wonder where he gets the energy from.

We already had a very good player under Ange, who knew what qualities he brought to the team, but Ange didn’t get half out of Maeda that Rodgers has already.

Rodgers has elevated his game to a whole other level. I think what we saw from him yesterday is the beginning of his development into a player who might become even more important than Kyogo and even more dangerous.

That’s not to say that Kyogo won’t continue to hold the love and affection of much of the support, but you can see scenarios where Kyogo isn’t started in certain games against certain teams, and we don’t drop off in terms of our quality as much as we would if we had to replace Maeda on the left.

His alertness yesterday and in previous games against the Ibrox club has been incredible to watch. They do not have any kind of plan for coping with him. Clement has had five attempts at it now, and before that, Beale had a few, and before him, Van Bronckhorst, and none of these guys has come up with any way to effectively cope with how he plays. Three managers over there, and not one of them can strategise a way to prevent this guy from tearing them to pieces on their left-hand side.

He now looks like the perfect weapon in the hands of a manager like Rodgers, who knows how to get the best out of everybody.

It’s not a coincidence that he started this season like an express train. In the same small window, Nicolas Kuhn has also come on leaps and bounds and is playing fantastic stuff, and he too was immense yesterday. Rodgers has focused on these two, changing certain elements of their game to be more direct, running into the penalty box, and getting shots on target. The effect of that on this team is dazzling.

Right now, Maeda looks head and shoulders above almost any player in the league for his cleverness, alertness, eye for goal, ability to spot a pass and make a run, and for that energy that seems almost limitless.

He is a constant pain for defenders and opposition managers to deal with, and the club across the city doesn’t look any more ready to do that, or any more capable of doing that, than they did when he first signed and terrorised Tavernier down that left side for the first time.

This is shaping up to be one hell of a campaign for Maeda. Already, to me, he looks as if he has joined that elite group of players at this team who should not be allowed to leave, except for the obscenest sums of money.

I don’t even know where we would start finding a guy who can do what he does on that left side of the pitch.

Hopefully, it’s a decision we don’t have to think about for a long time to come.