Jota is on the way back, but he is miles from being fit to play.

The news that Jota may be back by the end of next month and playing first-team football again should be excellent for Celtic supporters to hear. It should be one of the best positive stories of the year, and in fact it is great news, but we have to temper our expectations and understand something very clearly: Jota is not the cure for all of Celtic’s ills.

We are not in a good place right now, and one man coming back into the first-team picture is not going to solve everything that has gone wrong. His return gives us increased competition and creativity in one area of the pitch, but there are other areas which still need something extra. The transfer window is closed, we are strapped in for the long haul now, and there is nothing whatsoever we can do about that until January.

That is why the timing of this news is both welcome and dangerous.

It seems remarkable to think that only a few weeks ago the transfer window closed and some of the usual suspects were telling us how excellent it had been. Excellent? We have gaping holes in this squad. We left obvious problems unresolved, and now those chickens are coming home to roost along with all the others.

Celtic is a mess, but it is a mess we are stuck with for the next few months. So, while Jota’s return is something to welcome, I am not going to celebrate it too aggressively as though it fixes anything beyond the very specific thing it actually does.

This guy has to be eased back into the setup. He cannot be rushed back because supporters are desperate for reasons to feel optimistic, and he cannot be accelerated through the final stages of his recovery simply because the club needs something positive to talk about. The thinking behind this has to be much smarter than that.

Jota has been out for a very long time. There is no realistic world in which he comes back and is immediately the fully fit, fully sharp player we remember. Maybe not for weeks, maybe not for months, and perhaps not properly until next season.

Everyone at Celtic will be tempted to rush him. Jota himself may be tempted too, and of course he will. It has been such a long road back that he will want the thrill of running out at Celtic Park again, that first touch, that first roar from the crowd and that first goal which makes everything feel normal again.

That is entirely understandable from the player’s point of view, from the management team’s point of view and, frankly, from the point of view of everyone in the upper reaches of the club who desperately needs a positive story. But that cannot dictate the timetable.

Some players seem almost cursed by bad luck, and at times Jota’s career since leaving Celtic the first time has felt like that. His move to Saudi Arabia did not give him much football. He may have earned extremely well there and I hope he did, but he wanted to play. Then the move to France, which was supposed to rehabilitate his career, did not become the fresh start he hoped for either.

His return to Celtic was therefore more than a transfer. It was a homecoming.

This is obviously a club where he feels a real connection with the supporters, and that comeback was supposed to be the moment when everything turned around for him. Instead, things got worse.

To suffer such a serious injury so soon after returning must have been devastating. It was awful for him and a huge blow for Celtic. Brendan Rodgers had clearly been looking forward to working with him again, and suddenly one of the club’s biggest attacking threats disappeared for an enormous period of time.

Martin O’Neill gave us a rough timeline for Jota’s return, and the encouraging thing is that the reports now suggest he is moving towards that window. That is good news, but encouragement is all it should be.

I do not want this turned into another great Celtic rescue story before the guy has even kicked a ball.

Because I am not convinced we are going to get immediately the player we thought we were signing when he returned. A long layoff, following another period in which he had played very little football, means he is miles behind the physical level required to walk straight into this side and transform it.

Perhaps the rest of this season will simply be about rebuilding him. Perhaps a full summer will finally get him back to where he wants to be. And if it does not happen, nobody should be looking for someone to blame, because sometimes football is just cruel.

Sometimes injuries alter careers. Sometimes everything is done properly and the body simply does not respond the way everybody hoped.

That is why I do not want his comeback turned into a hero moment before it has even happened. The saviour has returned, everything will be fine now, here is the man who fixes Celtic.

That is inaccurate, and more importantly it is unfair.

We are all allowed to hope, and there is nothing wrong with hope. We are all allowed to encourage him and welcome him back with the kind of reception he deserves. There is nothing wrong with that either.

But we are not entitled to make demands of him.

For all we know, those demands would be unrealistic. For all we know, they would be impossible.

So temper the expectations. Let him come back slowly, let him work at his own pace, let him rediscover trust in his own body and let him rediscover the rhythm of football.

If we begin seeing flashes of the player who was here before, those moments will be wonderful.

And yes, at the back of our minds, we can all dare to dream. We can imagine the Henrik Larsson type of comeback, where a player returns from serious injury not merely restored but hungrier, stronger and more determined to make up for lost time.

But Larsson’s injury was different, his layoff was shorter, and this path has been far more complicated and far more treacherous.

So if I sound like the Prophet of Doom, I hope I also sound like the voice of common sense, because common sense is what Jota needs from us now.

Patience, understanding and proportion.

His return to Celtic Park will be beautiful. The response will be emotional, and it should be.

But the expectations need to be proportionate too.

Because Jota deserves the chance to come back as a footballer.

Not as the man expected to save Celtic from everything else that has gone wrong.

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