Brendan Rodgers believes that Scott Sinclair will enjoy the best years of his career at Celtic

The 27-year-old came off the bench to score the winger at Tynecastle yesterday after his signing finally got over the line.

Sinclair was the subject of five bids from Celtic before the deal was done this weekend and Rodgers believes that Celtic is the place for the player to get his career back on track.

“He can play in a couple of positions but I think his home is on that left side" said Rodgers. "He's not an out and out winger, he likes to be on the inside at times. He’ll run and be direct, he wants to get goals. 

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"He scored 27 goals for me in The Championship for Swansea and he wants to get in there and score goals in the Premier League. His natural habitat is off that left side, coming, joining in the game and getting in the box to score goals.”

"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.

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"Scotty, Ryan Bertrand and a number of them. 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.

"From there really his career stalled. So no one has really seen the best of him and 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 years of age, 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 39 to 35 are 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 the game better because you have better knowledge of the game. I always felt with Scotty you had to get him 50 metres higher up the pitch to help teams and hopefully he can re-create that here at Celtic.

"Aston Villa didn’t really want to lose the player, but Scott made it clear he wanted to leave."

And Rodgers was thrilled to see the player mark his debut with the winning goal in a hugely entertaining game at Tynecastle yesterday.

“It was an outstanding goal," enthused the Hoops boss. "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.

“His pace to get up there from being so far behind. 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.”