Celtic will benefit if we can crack the code of The Arne Engels Experiment.

Luke McCowan had such a good game the other day that the debate has started about whether he should start on Wednesday—and, in fact, whether he should just play every week. He won’t, of course. Play every week, I mean. But he may well start on Wednesday.

We’re in a tremendously advantageous position at the moment, with such strength in depth all over the pitch. McCowan is just one example of a player who would walk into any other side in the country but isn’t guaranteed a starting XI spot at this club. Bernardo, by the way, is another, and he has been excellent any time we’ve seen him in the side.

But it’s the fate of another of our midfielders that intrigues me at the moment, and that player is Arne Engels. The situation he finds himself in—and what the form of Luke McCowan ultimately means—relates to what I’ve taken to calling the Arne Engels experiment.

First, what is the Arne Engels experiment? Well, when we signed this guy from Germany, he was playing primarily in a defensive midfield role, and he was excelling for a Bundesliga club in that position. But Rodgers is convinced there are facets to Engels’ game which could be twisted, polished, and developed to make him a good fit for an attacking midfield berth.

Rodgers admits that we are trying to change the way Engels plays. And for what purpose, you might ask? Well, the purpose is simply this: we’ve signed this guy who we believe can be a long-term replacement for Matt O’Riley. In short, we want to turn him into the kind of goal-scoring midfielder O’Riley was for us, and Brendan believes that he has the skill set to do it. If you’re wondering why he sometimes looks as if he drifts in and out of games, it’s because he’s being played in an unfamiliar position right now as we try to get him up to speed.

But what if that’s not necessary? What if, in Engels, we already have the raw materials of the complete midfielder, and we don’t have to change any of it? We just have to let him play his natural game. Because what if we already have on the books a perfect replacement for Matt O’Riley in the advanced position? That player being Luke McCowan?

Well … it’s a little more complicated than that unfortunately.

McCowan isn’t the only midfielder we have who’s capable of getting into advanced positions and scoring a lot of goals. If you look at the way we set up, we play a very, very complex attacking game. On the left, we have Maeda playing almost as an inside forward, whose instructions now are to get the ball, run with it, and beat defenders. The same applies on the right side, where we’ve got an even more potent attacking, goal-scoring inside forward in Kuhn.

In the middle, of course, we have Kyogo or Idah.

But it’s behind those guys that you see where the really sophisticated Celtic attacking tactic lies. Because we play, in effect, two attacking midfield players—one who marshals the left side, the other the right. If you look at BBC Sport Scotland’s heat map of Luke McCowan the other day, you’ll see that he played predominantly on the right side of the two-man attacking midfield, with Bernardo on the other side.

It worked brilliantly. Both played well, and both scored.

So one of the questions Brendan’s got to ask himself now is do we really need to polish Engels up and turn him into a different kind of player when we’ve got a guy who looks as if he could step into O’Riley’s shoes and score goals in this league for fun?

I get that we want the best possible candidate for this job.

And if Engels develops into the kind of player we all think he’s capable of being, we’ll have a superb O’Riley replacement. But aren’t we in danger of letting perfect be the enemy of good here? Is it really necessary to spend so much time and effort changing Engels into a different kind of player when McCowan might already be capable of doing that job?

I mean, I get it. Rodgers sees something in Engels, and I wouldn’t bet against Rodgers being right. But at the end of the day, if we have a guy like McCowan who’s capable of getting on the scoresheet on a regular basis, isn’t it worth finding out if he can be our O’Riley replacement? That would allow Engels to play in his natural position and be at his best.

And the answer to that, of course, lies in Callum McGregor, and it’s here that we run into our issue, the real issue, the reason for the Arne Engels experiment in the first place.

We do play with two attacking midfielders. We also play with one holding midfielder. That means the one midfield role that’s left goes automatically to the captain. He is the defensive midfielder. And if you’re talking about Engels playing his more natural game, you’re talking about taking the captain out of the team … and we aren’t doing that. Although, when Callum came off the other day, we put Engels into his slot, and he did a good job there.

This, as much as anything else, might be the reason Rodgers is trying to reinvent Engels. And if it works, it will pay dividends for us for years to come and in the short term gives us four attacking midfield players, two of whom – Engels and Bernardo – can just as easily drop back. It all makes perfect sense when you look at it the right way.