Patrick Roberts' return to full fitness might solve a dilemma for Brendan Rodgers.

I just wonder if the fact that Scott Sinclair has not quite hit the heights of last season might encourage Rodgers to play James Forrest on one side and Roberts on another.

Roberts did not arrive until nearer the end of the transfer window after a long summer of negotiating and will be determined to get a strong second half of the campaign in after spending the last few months on the outside looking in.

The way that Forrest has played will make him very difficult to drop and by playing the Scotland internationalist and Roberts on each flank, it could be a way to accommodate both.

That wold lend a genuine bit of competition to the team too. Sinclair has not played badly this season but he has never been able to replicate the form of his first season.

He is another who will look to kick it up a gear when the games start again next week but a longer rest might be no bad thing for him.

Meanwhile, I had a smile when Rodgers spoke of his text message from Philippe Coutinho as the new Barcelona player arrived in La Liga.

You are entitled as a manager to enjoy your success stories – after all there is always a queue of folk at your back to tell you all about the ones that didn’t go so well.

It was a deliberate drop from Rodgers into the conversation that he had signed the player for £8.5m before Liverpool then raked in a staggering £142m for him.

And while it develops the prestige that Rodgers has of taking young players and getting the very best out of them, it does no-one any harm for that message to be reinforced.

Celtic on their own have a pretty enviable track record at the minute of doing just that. And with Rodgers at the helm what you have is a situation where both club and manager have a reputation for being able to provide a platform and the kind of coaching that can take a young player to the next level.

Given just how difficult the transfer market has become, this can only work to Celtic’s benefit.

It is how they were able to bring in the likes of Moussa Dembele, with Rodgers a significant part in that move.

But pre-Rodgers, the likes of Victor Wanyama, Fraser Forster and of course Virgil van Dijk have all found Celtic to be to their benefit. You would just have to ask Southampton what they thought of how Celtic prepared them for a move south of the border.

In the current climate when it is so tough to compete with the resources of even English Championship and League One sides, having a club who can offer a young player a genuine chance to get better while also playing in the Champions League has to be a considerable carrot.

In saying that, Celtic were able to get Odsonne Edouard in on loan this summer with a view to making a move for the striker permanent.

We have seen flashes of the player but given the current pricetag that he carries of £7m, a fee that would make him Celtic’s most expensive signing, I am not sure that there will be a rush to commit just yet.

I would think that the jury will be out on that one between now and the end of the season.

You have to bear in mind that what we see of the player is not the same as what the manager sees in day-to-day training. But I do think that the teenager has to still to convince.

He scored a hat-trick against Motherwell and has shown up reasonably well but I would think that for that kind of money that the player has still to convince.

In many ways, his future at the club may well depend on what happens next with Dembele. The club have maintained that there have been no offers as of yet for the striker but that could well change before the window closes at the end of this month.

I would also still maintain that Dembele himself has been unfazed by the chat going on around him. To be fair, that has been a constant since his very early months at Celtic because of his performances and I think his temperament is such that his head is not turned by it.

To me his big issue this season was doing his hamstring when he had just come back from the same injury. Psychologically I think that can have an impact mentally as well as the obvious physical impact that it has.

It clearly left Dembele playing catch-up in terms of match fitness and you are never going to hit your best streak of form if you are not fully up to speed.