Tomoki Iwata’s situation at Celtic is looking a whole lot better than it was a week ago.
The Japanese midfielder hadn’t made a competitive appearance under Brendan Rodgers this time last week. In our league wins over Rangers and Dundee, he didn’t even make the 20-man matchday squad.
Iwata has been back involved over the past seven days, coming on as a second-half substitute in our games against Feyenoord and Livingston.
He played 24 minutes against the Eredivisie champions before playing half an hour at the Tony Macaroni Arena. At the weekend he replaced compatriot Reo Hatate, with Rodgers opting to introduce him instead of David Turnbull, Odin Thiago Holm or Paulo Bernardo.
While that may just be a case of Iwata offering more defensive protection than those three, it is certainly good news as far as he is concerned. He has performed pretty well on both outings too.
Iwata was a relatively impressive performer for Celtic last season after making the January switch from Yokohama F. Marinos. He came on in all of the derbies he was available for and was clearly someone trusted by Ange Postecoglou.
Perhaps he is still to get to that stage with Rodgers. That seems to be the next step for him in his Hoops career. If he’s given more chances in some of our European games he needs to take them.
For all of the midfielders we currently have on our books, Iwata does something that perhaps nobody else does. He is a ball-winner who moves it on to more creative players.
There could be some more big opportunities for him to come, starting this Saturday against Motherwell.
In other news, fiery Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers hits back at stirring media narrative
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