Brendan Rodgers says Celtic new Bhoy Scott Sinclair still has best years ahead of him after dream debut
The Hoops boss reckons debut scorer Sinclair will be desperate to kick-start his career at Parkhead after Hearts winner
BRENDAN RODGERS helped Scott Sinclair start off his career.
Now the Celtic boss has vowed to give the £4.5million new Bhoy a platform to kick-start it.
Sinclair got his Hoops career off to a dream start yesterday with a debut goal against Hearts at Tynecastle.
Rodgers leapt out of the dugout when the ball hit the back of the net as his latest signing wasted no time in impressing.
And the Parkhead boss reckons Sinclair will now be desperate to get his career going again after a disappointing few years.
Rodgers said: “Scott has always been about enjoying his football — but the last four years have been really difficult.
“I had him when he was 16 at Chelsea. He played in a really good youth team I had there.
“He went out on loan to a couple of clubs and then I brought him to Swansea where he was outstanding. That got him a move to Manchester City but from there, really his career stalled.
“No one has really seen the best of him and they probably forgot about his qualities.
“But this was a guy who four or five years ago was scoring a hat-trick in a play-off final under big pressure in front of 90,000. He has a big talent.
“He is still young — 27 — physically strong, robust, can play in big games and loves the big occasion and has a lot to learn still.
“So I think he will be really big for us.
“You get to 29 and then 29 to 35 is when you play your best football.
“The years between 22 to 29 are an acid age, then 29 to 35 you can keep your career going and be fit.
“You play better because you have better knowledge of the game. He is not even at that stage yet.
“He knows he had to get his career going again, because it stalled a little bit.
“At Aston Villa he always seemed to play full-back.
“I always felt with Scotty you had to get him 50 metres higher up the pitch to help teams and hopefully he can recreate that here at Celtic.
“Aston Villa didn’t really want to lose the player, but Scott made it clear he wanted to leave.”
Sinclair couldn’t have asked for a better start to his Celtic career with his late strike winning three points.
The Hoops boss added: “It was an outstanding goal.
“You track the speed of his run and once he’s breaking away it’s that hunger and desire that you see from really good players to want to get up and join in.
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“His pace to get up there from being so far behind was good. Leigh Griffiths has done great and then, like great strikers, he knows where he wants to put the ball. Scotty has just checked his stride and got a great finish on it.
“He couldn’t have asked for any more considering he’d had just three hours’ sleep on Friday night to travel up and had a long day yesterday.
“It was a great start for him in front of our supporters as well.
“I’ve been looking to get him for a long time because I know the impact he can have.
“He knows how I work. He’s super-fast and that hopefully will be one of many goals he can get.
“He can play in a couple of positions. I think his home is on that left side. He’s not an out- and-out winger. He’ll run and be direct, he wants to get goals.
“He scored 27 goals for me in the Championship for Swansea and he wants to get in there and score goals in the Premiership.
“His natural habitat is off that left side, coming in, joining in the game and getting in the box to score goals.”
Celtic weren’t happy to settle for a point and Rodgers made a tactical change which had a major impact on the outcome.
He added: “I was delighted with how the players accepted the risk in the game. With 20 minutes to go, we wanted to win.
“We weren’t happy with the point, so we took off a defender and moved young Kieran Tierney back in. We stuck on extra attackers and had a No 10 and two wide players joining in with the strikers, so we were really attacking the game.
“Then when we got the goal, we sewed the game up and saw it out.
“It was a demonstration of the mentality of the players and I was delighted with that.
“Hopefully people are starting to see a trend. There is a mentality in the team. The football will come later.”
James Forrest was the man who fired Celts in front. The winger — out of contract in December — is set for fresh talks over a new deal.
Rodgers added: “He wants to stay. I said to him when I first came in that I thought he had been on loan for two seasons. I wondered where he was.
“I remember down in England watching him and I saw this young player who I thought was a real talent — fast, dynamic, could get at people — and for whatever reason it hadn’t worked out for him in the last couple of seasons.
“I had a joke with him that I’d like to see James Forrest back here because the guy who was here was away on loan for a couple of years!
“Since pre-season he has been absolutely first class.
“He wants to stay, he spoke to me in Slovenia and said he was enjoying the work and he feels an important part of the squad and would like to stay. So it’s between the agent and the club now to arrange that.”