"We’ve got about a million wingers and don’t need another one but he’s a talent and in the summer we’ll probably lose wingers and he’ll look to come in."

Those were the words of Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers after Marian Shved joined the club back in January 2019.

The Northern Irishman felt that the Hoops was already well-stocked with wingers, after all, he had recruited natural wide-men Oliver Burke and Timothy Weah in the same transfer window.

He also had James Forrest, Jonny Hayes, Mikey Johnston, Daniel Arzani, and Scott Sinclair as well as Lewis Morgan who was on loan at Sunderland.

Ironically Shved's arrival turned out to be signalling the end of Rodgers' first managerial reign as he quit to join Leicester City a month later.

Fast forward to the summer of 2023 and Rodgers is back in the Celtic managerial chair.

He also has another million wingers at his disposal. Only this time, it's in a good way.

The wide players available include Jota, Daizen Maeda, Liel Abada, Sead Haksabanovic and James Forrest.

There is also the returning Mikey Johnston, fresh from his loan spell in Portugal with Vitoria de Guimaraes, where he made 31 appearances in all competitions and scored three goals and five assists as he helped his team to a sixth-place finish in the Primera Liga.

The Hoops academy graduate also helped himself to his first goal at international level during the recent 3-0 win for the Republic of Ireland against Gibraltar.

It was Rodgers, of course, who handed Johnston his first Celtic start back in a 4-1 Scottish Premiership home win back in May 2017.

Read into that what you will.

Wingers have featured prominently in Rodgers' managerial career. None more so than at Celtic.

It largely explains why one of his first signings for the club back in August 2016 was Scott Sinclair from Aston Villa who signed for four years for an initial £3 million rising to £4.5 million with add-ons.

The duo had worked together previously at Swansea and his signing was a signal of intent by the manager.

Rodgers knew that a player like Sinclair would excite the Celtic faithful.

Rodgers declared in the early days of his first tenure that he was a Celtic supporter and with this dip into the transfer market, he ensured that his version of the green-and-white machine was going to uphold one of the finest traditions that the club has always endorsed.

A commitment to playing attacking football with wingers. Wingers are sewn into the very fabric of the Celtic jersey.

Wide men have always been part of the club's DNA, from legends like Patsy Gallacher and Charlie Tully right through to Lisbon Lion Jimmy Johnstone and on to modern-day heroes such as Davie Provan, Joe Miller, Didier Agathe, James Forrest, Paddy McCourt, Paddy Roberts and of course Sinclair.

READ MORE: Nobody was quite like Celtic's greatest-ever player Jimmy Johnstone

In Rodgers' first spell at Celtic, there was a real emphasis on an attacking blueprint. It was a heady mixture of entertaining, attacking football, with wingers playing pivotal roles.

His men were not deployed on the flanks just for the sake of it.

They had to combine both functions which make a complete wideman - scoring and creating if you will - there had to be a ruthlessness and potency in goal contributions and assists.

During his first spell at Celtic. he won the Invincible Treble amassing an amazing 106 points in the league. They also embarked on a 69-match unbeaten run.

Colossal statistics by any stretch of the imagination.

Some players excelled more than others in that campaign. Step forward, Sinclair.

He hit the ground running and then some after scoring the winner on his debut at Tynecastle in a 2-1 league victory on the opening day of the 2016-17 campaign barely hours after putting pen to paper.

His first season in Scotland was off the charts as he netted 25 goals and was second in the top goalscorers chart to fan favourite Moussa Dembele, who notched 32.

Sinclair also swept the boards at the awards ceremonies as individually he collected the Celtic Supporters' Player of the Year, Celtic Players' Player of the Year, PFA Scotland Players' Player of the Year, SFWA Footballer of the Year and was named in the PFA Scotland Team of the Year.

Now optimism abounds, verging on hysteria, as Rodgers has taken over the managerial reins once again.

For a start, he has inherited "a million wingers", and every one of them is capable of improvement.

That's as exciting as it gets for him.

The creative flair players who can contribute to the goals and assists column are already in situ.

Can you imagine a Jota, Maeda, Abada or Haksabanovic hitting the dizzy heights that Sinclair did in terms of a goals ratio and performances during Rodgers's first season back at the helm?

Jota in particular epitomises the Celtic style. There is an air of confidence bordering on gallusness with the superstar from Portugal.

He has a knack for producing the spectacular, he always has fans on the edge of their seats and his contributions in terms of numbers are worthy of writing home about.

Jota notched 13 goals and 12 assists in season one. He scored 15 goals and created 12 in the treble-winning campaign just past.

Rodgers would no doubt challenge Jota to see if he could claim 20 goals or, better still, emulate Sinclair's debut season and score 25 goals in all competitions.

Under Rodgers, a player like Jota could easily raise his game to the next level which would be a frightening prospect for domestic and European defences alike.

As for Abada, he contributed 13 goals and nine assists this campaign from 47 appearances but mostly from the bench compared to 15 goals and 11 assists from 54 appearances in season 2021-22 when he was a more regular starter.

The Israeli has shown too that he can be relied upon on the big occasion to turn it on.

Rodgers may well be the manager that Abada needs to convince him that the grass is not always greener elsewhere and a Sinclair-style first-season rejuvenation is not beyond the 21-year-old.

The same logic applies to Haksabanovic, who has been plagued with injuries since he came to the club. The Montenegrin weighed in with five goals and four assists from 40 appearances totalling just 1,313 minutes of first-team football last term.

That is a modest return but the raw materials are there with him and Rodgers would be confident that he could also turn him into a double-double digit wide man in terms of goals and assists for the 2023-24 season.

Japanese winger Maeda may be the one who has more to prove to the new manager.

While Ange Postecoglou was an admirer of Maeda's work ethic and selfless performances for the team, his rate of 11 goals and seven assists over 49 matches could be greatly improved upon.

It remains to be seen if Rodgers would be as keen to see one of his wingers' strengths and supposedly potent attack weapons being his defensive forte.

It is Rodgers's wingers who could well hold the key to Celtic dominating the Scottish domestic scene all over again as well as re-establishing the club as a potential force in the European arena where the club desperately crave success.

It's a small wonder the Celtic supporters are excited about the future.

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Not for the first time at the Hoops, Rodgers finds himself with "a million wingers" to choose from.

It's no big deal, Rodgers is a wide boy.

His philosophy and playing style are such that his system will do its best to accommodate the more gifted wide players in his squad.

It's time for Rodgers to get to work on his wingers to see who can actually match his vaulting ambitions for the club, especially in Europe, and to see which of his wide players' Celtic club careers are as he himself famously put it, "Terminado".