Celtic knows Tierney is a risk. It’s up to us to mitigate that risk.

Last year, when it became obvious that Celtic was serious in its pursuit of re-signing Kieran Tierney, I prayed the club wouldn’t do it.

My memories of Kieran Tierney are of a marauding, left-sided defender who could have played anywhere.

I don’t want to watch a player who is a shadow of that. I don’t want us to have on our books a guy who does nothing but sit in the stand. And I was worried—very worried—that that was going to be what we eventually remembered the player for.

Still, I’ve come around to the idea, while harbouring the deep fear that it might unravel for us. Because it has been a long time since Kieran played a sustained number of games and as our first-choice left-back, that’s an awful lot of water we’re asking the guy to carry, more than he’s had to carry in a long time, and that is a source of concern.

I am not terribly troubled by the news that he has pulled out of the Scotland squad with an injury. Not terribly troubled—except in that Steve Clarke has now admitted that he played Tierney in that ludicrous, useless, wasteful, torturous, abysmal friendly match against Iceland knowing that he was injured.

That again calls Clarke’s judgement into question.

But of course, Clarke is not really the one exercising the poor judgement. That would be those who continue to leave Clarke in post.

A risk like that shouldn’t be Steve Clarke’s to take. But at the end of the day, he has done it. It’s what he’s chosen. And we are now living with it. It’s probably not a serious problem—if it was, he couldn’t have played Tierney in the first place. So, I’m not going to join the chorus of doom that’s audible elsewhere. Anger, yes, but not doom.

What I am going to do is offer a reminder: this is what we signed up for. This is what we knew we were getting into. Every time Tierney goes down with an injury, we’re all going to have our hearts in our mouths. That’s just the way it is. That’s the natural consequence of the position we’ve gotten ourselves into.

This signing was a risk. Is a risk. And until Tierney proves that he can handle a long run of games, every little niggle is going to give some of our support palpitations.

Obviously, we’d all prefer it was otherwise. But we recognise the risk, a risk that has become more acute now, with the near certainty that Greg Taylor will be leaving the club.

Because if you’re going to have an injury-prone main guy—and whether we like it or not, that tag is fixed to Kieran—then you need an able backup. You need someone who can step in, take charge, and hold down the position if the worst happens.

Nobody is necessarily saying that it will come to that. As I said, I’m not terribly concerned that he’s pulled out of the Scotland squad with a knock.

It’s probably nothing to worry about. Probably only a minor injury—albeit one that might have been made worse by the fact that Steve Clarke put him in the team knowing he was carrying it.

But it underscores the need—the very pressing need—for us to go out and buy another left-back. It’s one of those issues on which there really is no choice.

We should be looking to do a deal almost as soon as the window opens. We need time to bed players in this summer. And although we don’t have a Champions League game to come in July, it’s going to be on us all too quickly.

This last-minute style that we have of making signings and trying to bed them into the team in a hurry is just not going to fly this year. The prize is too big. The consequences of missing it, too great. We need to be ready—and this is an obvious problem we have to solve.

I am comforted by the number of left-backs we’ve already been linked with in this window. It’s clear that we knew Greg’s situation a while back and that we’re working on the problem.

But part of the problem is that we’ve signed a player with a long history of injuries and it is now up to us to mitigate the risk we’ve willingly taken, as best we possibly can. And this little moment of minor anxiety has shown us that we can’t wait too long to do it.