Tounekti, this is your Celtic chance. Grab it, man.

There are few players in the Celtic squad as frustrating to watch as Sebastian Tounekti.

He is frustrating because he has shown flashes of brilliance. You don’t get frustrated with a player who can’t do it at all. You simply get frustrated with the coaches who keep picking him regardless of his form.

The thing with Tounekti is that he definitely has talent.

But we’re Celtic fans and talent is not enough.

It’s not enough to play here in little flashes, to show what you can do in sporadic bursts. You have to do it consistently. You have to do it a lot. You have to do it more or less all the time, because if you’re not doing it consistently, you’re not really doing it at all.

Sebastian Tounekti is going to have to step it up.

There are times when I have genuinely liked watching him. He likes the spectacular as well, and in a game where the opposition is defending deep and not giving much away, it’s good to have a player who can produce a moment of magic which wins the game in spite of all their best efforts.

There have been games when he has come on as a substitute and looked like the real deal.

But he hasn’t done it anywhere near enough.

It is curious that the guy he is replacing in the team, the guy who is away on international duty, had exactly the same problem at the club.

Yang had obvious talent. Unmistakable talent. An ability to do big things in big moments.

But without consistency.

It has taken a lot of patience from the fans and from the club, but we are now seeing in Yang the player who was clearly there all along, only on a much more consistent basis.

If there is any argument in favour of keeping Tounekti in this team at the moment, it is to compare him to the guy who has just left.

If we were willing to give one of them a chance, why not the other?

The dividends are now being paid in terms of Yang’s talent, and maybe if we give Tounekti time we will see a similar talent emerge.

So goes the theory anyway.

What Tounekti needs more than anything else, of course, is time in the team.

And if we decide not to play Kasper from the start tonight, which is what I hope we do, there is a chance that we will see Tounekti play wide left.

That will give him an opportunity.

If he can prove himself over the next few weeks while Yang is away, then he will get game time in this team no matter what.

Every player who is out of form or out of favour knows that when the chances come, you have to seize them.

You cannot rest on your laurels.

You cannot phone it in.

I’m not saying Tounekti is one of those players, but if he wants a future at Celtic, if he wants a top-class future in the game, then when these chances come along he has got to grab them.

Spend even one minute of these kinds of games meandering around like you don’t care and the cameras are going to spot it. The fans are going to spot it. The manager is going to spot it.

And when the next chance comes, you are not going to be trusted to take it.

Tounekti was scouted for a while and he cost us a lot of money.

He is not the complete waste of everybody’s time that Balikwisha was. We may go to our graves without knowing what happened there.

And the fact that they were signed in the same window has always cast a shadow over the Tunisian, as though because one signing was bad the other automatically must be bad as well.

That isn’t fair.

But it is the reality of the perception, and something Tounekti was always going to have to fight through.

Even stripping that away, though, he hasn’t impressed to the level his transfer fee demanded.

Here is the one thing I will say in his defence.

There are few players who have ever signed for this club and gone through a first season as tumultuous as his.

Signed by Rodgers, only for Rodgers to leave.

A new guy comes in, plays him a handful of times, and that guy gets sacked.

Then O’Neill comes in.

To have worked under three different managers in your first campaign, all with different ideas about how they want to play, means there was no settling-in period.

There was no normality.

Everybody who was at Celtic Park last season must have been scratching their heads in amazement.

Tounekti more than most.

Because he was used by three managers and never really got the chance to establish a rhythm.

So maybe it is as simple as saying that he needs a period of stability.

I thought he started this season well. In the games at the beginning of the campaign, I thought he looked very good.

But you cannot just do it for two or three games in a row and then fall back into old ways.

Consistency has to be there.

And that is where Tounekti has been a bit of a let-down.

Nevertheless, if he finds his form, and this would be one hell of a time to do it, then he makes himself pretty hard to ignore.

Yes, the manager already has a lot of options in the squad. If we had a fully fit squad and everyone was here, he would have even more.

But that’s the point.

This is the moment.

This is it.

Now, when the manager has reduced options and is relying on you, step up.

Do it now and he won’t forget it later.

But the reverse is also true.

Screw it up now and you might not be trusted again.

This is the defining period of Sebastian Tounekti’s time at Celtic.

The chance has come.

If he gets selected, he has to grab it and show us all what he can do.

Tonight, if he starts, he needs to perform.

That gives him a chance of starting at Ibrox.

If he starts at Ibrox, then this really is his moment.

Three big games in the space of a week gives him every chance of a fresh start.

And Celtic fans will look at him differently if this is the moment when the machine finally switches on.

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