Don’t expect miracles from Jota on his Celtic return, it’s been one hell of a long road

There’s been a lot of excitement around the prospect of Felipe Jota returning to the Celtic first team after being out for 18 months due to injury.

As we know, Jota ruptured his ACL back in April of 2025 in a title decider against Dundee United at Tannadice.

It’s been one hell of a long road, but his return is nearing according to reports in the media yesterday.

Jota’s return will, no doubt, signal the intent to retain the 4-3-3 formation due to the fact it increases our wing options in a very positive way.

By the time he’s back, he will be available alongside Hyun-jun Yang, Haissem Hassan, and Sebastian Tounekti.

Yang will be back in time for the October 11th return to club football after the extended international break.

Jota is expected to return to the Celtic first team a few weeks later

Because of the direction our season has gone before the international, there is going to be an expectancy that Jota, upon his return, could be a game changer.

Now, there’s no doubt a 100% fit and in form Jota could be a game changer.

But people would do well not to expect miracles from him when he returns.

I get that at this point, we’re going to be looking for miracles, but let’s not expect them to come from Jota.

After an 18 month recovery period, returning to the field of play will be one of two things.

It will either be an extremely daunting task, or he will fully embrace it.

But if it’s the latter, people are going to have to be patient.

For any player, returning after an injury as horrendous and long-term as Jota’s has been, there is going to be a psychological element to it.

The first thing in Jota’s mind when he makes his return for Celtic is going to be, ‘could this happen to me again?’

It’s the thing that frightens all players who return from a serious injury like that.

With that in the back of his mind, Jota isn’t going to be putting himself about during the early stages of his return.

In fact, don’t be surprised if you see a player who is a shadow of what he was when he makes his initial return.

This is going to take time, and patience.

It’s been a long, hard recovery for Jota, and he will know he has to mind himself until his confidence fully returns.

The more games he plays, the more the fear of a recurrence of his injury will dissipate.

I don’t doubt he’ll eventually find his swagger again.

But if we continue to struggle before Jota’s return, we cannot expect him to be the one to turn our entire season around

This is the problem in a season like this, you become reliant on certain individuals to turn things around.

Or at least you hope they will.

Jota might return and hit the ground running.

All I’m saying is that if he doesn’t, we shouldn’t be disappointed.

He needs to be given the time to bed back into the squad, and we also have to hope that pressure to perform as a result of the team continuing to play poorly, if it does, doesn’t take it’s toll on him.

So, let’s just see how this pans out.

It will be great to have him back.

Let’s just not expect too much of him.

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