Tierney is still fighting to get back to what he was, if he ever can, which many doubt. He has looked a diminished force since his return to Glasgow, but again, these are early days in his bid to regain the pace and power that made him special.
He hasn’t had much of the exuberance of before and little of the overlapping chaos that he contributes on his best days. In most of his performances, you would hardly know that he was there, which is saying something about a player who you always knew was there.
Many have doubted him before, of course. Doubt is nothing new in his world. It’s hard to know how many times that Tierney has bounced back from adversity, but if you were to call this latest period in his career his third or fourth coming then you wouldn’t be far away. If anything, it might be a touch conservative.
So he toils in his comeback and the mood music in places is that he may never be the player he used to be and that Celtic probably should never have re-signed him, despite the emotional tug.
It’s too early to say. Tierney is still rebuilding while maybe packing some psychological baggage that is holding him back. Every injury he has had has given him a chance to show how mentally robust he can be and he’s having to dig deep again.
He’s used to it, sadly. Way back at the start, he was poised for a Celtic debut, late 2014, when he broke his leg. He said later that he didn’t want to use it as an excuse for not making it with Celtic.
He was 17 at the time. Mature and driven. At 19, he tore ankle ligaments in a freak training ground accident and missed two months of the season. At 21, in season 2018-19, he had five different injuries, including a groin and a double hernia that left him in bits.
By then, he had established himself as one of Celtic’s best-ever left-backs. In season 2017-18, he played 60 games, one of the most played players in Europe. A kid but already a colossus. He has spoken about the season after that and how he was in constant pain. Maybe that was the start of the problems that followed.
“I had a hernia and fluid around the area,” he told the Open Goal podcast, external, an interview that was almost shocking to listen to. “I kept playing and playing,” he said. “I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t walk, but I was still trying to play.
“I was taking injections every game. Two of those were painkillers. I had osteitis pubis (chronic pain in the lower abdomen and groin) and it’s a bad thing.”
Jonny Hayes, a team-mate, told him that a friend of his had to retire with that injury. Tom Rogic, another team-mate, called him an idiot for playing on. “Tell them you can’t play – this is bad,” he said.
“I was taking steroid injections. Retirement was a rumour that was flying about. Did I start to think that? It did creep in, aye.”
This was early 2019. Celtic’s crown jewel was being placed in jeopardy, partly his own fault because of his desperate desire to play. He recounted a story about back-to-back games against Hearts on the title run-in. Neil Lennon had just taken over from Brendan Rodgers. The club was fixated on eight-in-a-row at the time.
“I wasn’t supposed to play against Hearts as I was down for the Hibs game after that. (Neil) Lennon came in and said, ‘I need you to play’ and obviously I was going to,” he explained. “We had two days of rest and then Hibs and I was cramping up on the walk before the game. I was done. It was horrible. It was the worst time of my life.”
