Tounekti has to show Celtic something soon.

Sebastian Tounekti is expected to start today, and that is one of the real points of controversy amongst Celtic supporters at the moment because, so far, he has not exactly set the world on fire.

Tounekti talked a good game in his recent media interview. He offered some mitigating factors for why things have not gone as well as he would have hoped, and some of those explanations may be perfectly reasonable. But Celtic supporters now need to see evidence of the player we are being told is there rather than continuing to judge him entirely on the player we have actually seen.

Tounekti is at the biggest club of his career, and this is the difficult stage at a difficult club. This is where you either prove that you can handle the level or you eventually have to accept that perhaps you are not cut out for it.

Celtic is not a club where a player can afford to produce one good performance every three or four games, and there are supporters who would argue that we are not even getting that much from him. This is a club where you have to perform consistently.

As Paulina is fond of pointing out, Celtic is a club where the pressure never really stops. There is nowhere to hide.

To be fair to Tounekti, he does not hide.

He always wants the ball, he seems to have plenty of self-confidence and, in the games where he has shown us something, there have been moments when he has looked as though he could become a real menace once he finds some proper form.

But that form cannot remain elusive forever. There may not be another player in this squad who more desperately needs a sustained run of really good performances.

It would also be churlish not to acknowledge that there is an unfair element to the pressure he is under. From the beginning, Tounekti has not only been carrying his own weight. He has also been carrying some of the burden created by another signing from the same window.

Celtic signed Tounekti and Michel-Ange Balikwisha in roughly the same period, and Balikwisha has contributed virtually nothing to this team.

As a result, Tounekti has been judged not only against his own fee and expectations, but against that transfer window as a whole. That is where some of the serious long-term doubt surrounding him comes from.

Simply put, very little else from that window went according to plan. So why should supporters automatically believe this one will?

That may be unfair. It may even be harsh.

But the only way out of that situation is to be better.

Tounekti has to show something he has not demonstrated consistently enough so far. That is the only thing which will move the needle. These next few weeks are therefore massive for him. I am not saying Celtic will definitely try to sell him, move him on or replace him if he fails to deliver over the next couple of weeks. But by this point, that has to be a genuine risk.

There has to be more. Celtic cannot simply continue as we are because we are not getting enough from a player who cost significant money, and we cannot wait indefinitely for everything to suddenly click.

At some point a decision has to be made about whether Tounekti can be trusted and relied upon for the season ahead. That is what we are really talking about here.

Because if Celtic does not go out and sign another left-sided attacker, then Tounekti effectively becomes the Daizen Maeda replacement.

And right now, that makes a lot of us uncomfortable.

I am sure Martin O’Neill will not be entirely comfortable with it either, particularly when you factor in Jota. As I said yesterday, Celtic simply cannot sit around waiting for Jota to return and pretend that solves the problem.

He has been out too long and has to be handled properly. That means Celtic needs somebody capable of owning that left-sided role now. If Tounekti is going to be that player, then this really is his window.

If he starts today, he has to show something.

Because if he does not start, I begin to wonder what the plan is.

Yang Hyun-jun has already been moved from one flank to the other. That then has consequences elsewhere, including forcing Camilo Durán into positions the manager may not ideally want to use him in.

The compromises have already begun because Tounekti has not yet made that position unquestionably his own. That is the problem.

When one player cannot be relied upon to hold down his role, the manager starts moving pieces around elsewhere. Then one compromise creates another.

That is how a squad which looks adequately covered on paper suddenly starts feeling thin in several positions at once.

Tounekti has an opportunity to change all of that.

And I genuinely hope he does.

I would much rather see a player already at Celtic succeed than spend the next few weeks talking about another failed signing and another position we have to fix.

There have been flashes. There have been moments. There have been little hints of the player Celtic presumably believed it was buying.

But the hints need to become performances. Soon.

Should he play today, he needs to make his presence felt. He needs to demand the ball, attack his defender and show that he can influence a game from beginning to end rather than simply appearing in flashes.

He does not literally have to produce the performance of his life today, but he does need to start producing evidence.

Because the questions are growing. What exactly does he offer us? Can he hold down that position? Can Celtic trust him over an entire season? Can he become the player we were promised? Fair or unfair, that is life at a club like Celtic.

The pressure is enormous because the expectations are enormous.

Sebastian Tounekti is either capable of thriving under that pressure or he is not.

We are going to find out very soon.

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