Reo Hatate showed Celtic fans last night why the boss left him on the pitch.

As I wrote earlier, the most critical decision we took last night was to leave Reo Hatate on the pitch in spite of his not having the best game. A mate of mine said something interesting just before the end of the game; he said you don’t keep a player like him on because he’ll be brilliant for 90 minutes. You keep him on because he has the quality to produce a single moment of brilliance … and sometimes that’s enough.

That has always been what separates the good players from the great ones, those little individual moments when the pressure is on and you are waiting for someone to step up. In that moment the guys like Hatate prove their value, and he did so, and in so doing he moved us one giant step towards being crowned champions.

Hatate divides opinion amongst fans. There are those who would never see him out of the team and others who don’t think he’s doing enough right now and who hasn’t been doing well enough for quite some time. They look at someone like McCowan warming the bench and guess that they would do a better job.

But we have all seen enough of Reo to know what he is capable of in those little moments where his game intelligence is far ahead of most other people on the pitch. Sure, the occasional pass goes astray and he isn’t as clinical as he was when he first signed, when in his first few months he looked almost outrageously talented to the point where you wondered how long we could keep hold of him … but you know what? He’s still a footballer I think we’re lucky to have and one I’d be loathe to lose.

I thought he played much better when we put McGowan up alongside him last night, when he was suddenly not being as closely man-marked by defenders who suddenly had more to deal with than they could handle. Give Reo room at all and he can and he will and he does do damage and like everyone else who has gotten the Brendan Rodgers seal of approval one of the reasons why is that he is willing to work hard.

That’s where you cannot ever fault Reo, he is a grafter. The manager might initially have had his doubts on that score but not now. He clearly feels that he’s an indispensable part of the side and you can see why in those little moments, those which on their own can win games. The boss is not daft. He knew exactly what he was doing last night in keeping the Japanese midfielder on the pitch and taking off Bernardo instead, and I write that as someone who thinks he might be the best of the summer signings.

We might well be watching Reo for the last season; I think there’s been a lot of talk about him heading off to England or somewhere in Europe. He’s been the subject of a lot of talk and a lot of clubs were certainly sniffing around him last year, and perhaps it would be the right time, especially if we’re trying to transition a certain young Scottish midfielder into the side as the rumour mill suggest we might well be.

I would not like to see that, but this team will evolve like every other Celtic squad i’ve watched does, and has, and will. People forget how “new” this Celtic midfield is, and Callum excepted he is its longest serving player; this will be three and a half full seasons at the club, which sounds like a little but in our modern context isn’t at all.

A lot of our modern heroes have left much earlier than this, and if Hatate gives us even another year he will have shown us a commitment beyond what many others did, and moments of magic like the one we saw last night will win us even more points. That’s why he was out there. It’s why the boss left him out there.