CHRISTIE’S WORKING MIRACLES
Rice hails former Caley kid for grafting his way back from the brink at Celtic
NO matter how many big calls a coach or a manager gets right in their careers, it’s the ones that got away that tend to flash through their minds in the wee small hours of the morning.
For Celtic, the names of Shay Given and Andrew Robertson will always be used to demonstrate the danger in putting too much store in size rather than ability.
Freed 15 years apart, they departed without a first-team game between them only to both prove their considerable worth elsewhere.
For all he is now the form player in Neil Lennon’s side, one who has climbed to the top of the scoring charts as of the weekend, there is no question Ryan Christie was also mighty close to following suit.
Unlike the aforementioned duo, though, the difference with Christie was that he had featured occasionally — and scored — for the first team. He’d also gained the necessary experience by spending 18 months on loan at Aberdeen.
And yet, for reasons that were never made clear to him as he sat miserable in the stand as Celtic lost at Tynecastle a year past in August, he was starting to accept the possibility that he’d never become a mainstay with his boyhood heroes.
‘It was hard to see a pathway for me then,’ he later reflected. ‘Hearts was the first away league game of the season and I was in the stand — and for a few games after that.’
It would be plainly wrong to suggest that all at the club were blinded to Christie’s ability. But given that he found himself edged out by Brendan Rodgers’ acquisitions including Eboue Kouassi and Youssouf Mulumbu, Christie, a Ronny Deila signing, simply found himself caught in a log-jam.
It will always come back to that Betfred Cup semi-final with Hearts at Murrayfield at the end of October. With Kouassi injured early on in the game and Olivier Ntcham only lasting until half-time, he was given his chance.
What followed was what the Hollywood script writers like to term a sliding-doors moment. Without the untimely injuries, it’s likely Christie would have remained inactive and with his contract due to expire at the end of that season, a parting of the ways would surely have beckoned.
We now know how that particular chapter did play out. Having had a hand in two goals before scoring a third, he took all the plaudits and truly never looked back.
He scored in his next two matches against Dundee and Hearts then set up Odsonne Edouard for the winner against RB Leipzig.
Full international honours came before netting the only goal in the Betfred Cup final against Aberdeen. The door firmly closed behind him, a fresh three-year deal was signed.
Rodgers’ abrupt departure for Leicester in February might well have set the man from Inverness back but Lennon just happened to be a paid-up member of his fan club.
It’s not hard to see what the Celtic manager admires. Were the player’s extraordinary work off the ball to be the sum total of his talents, he would walk into many a side. But there’s also the technique, the game-intelligence and his versatility.
And, increasingly, there are the goals.
His brace in Dingwall took him to 15 for the campaign (plus one for Scotland) with ten assists to boot. Remarkably, Edouard (with 14) is now playing catch-up.
By the start of December, the attacking midfielder had already bettered the best tallies in a season of Shunsuke Nakamura and Stiliyan Petrov. Christie is just one shy of Shaun Maloney’s greatest annual return and is well on target to match Kris Commons’ astonishing 32-goal haul from six years ago.
Assistant at Inverness Caley Thistle when John Hughes handed the player his debut in December 2013, Hamilton manager Brian Rice feels credit for a change in fortunes over the past 15 months belongs to no one other than Christie.
‘Ryan always had the potential to be a very, very good player,’ he said ahead of a Parkhead Premiership date tomorrow evening.
‘He comes from a footballing family, obviously, because his dad, Charlie, was a player as well.
‘He’s very similar to Scott Arfield, whom I also had as a kid at Falkirk. They both love their football and you can see that reflected in how hard they both worked.
‘They were the ones you had to drag off the training ground because they were always staying behind to do extra sessions and practise different things.
‘It’s not a coincidence that the pair of them have kicked on because they put so much into their game. Ryan has been outstanding and he’s now a major player for Scotland as well.’
Christie is also the latest poster boy for successful loan spells. In the way that Callum McGregor
benefited from game time at Notts County and Kristoffer Ajer came back from Kilmarnock a better defender, Christie is living proof of what can happen when someone is determined to shape their own destiny.
‘Ryan went to Aberdeen and sometimes when you leave the Old Firm, it’s difficult to motivate yourself to keep going to get better and keep improving — but he did that there,’ added Rice.
‘He treated it properly. He became an Aberdeen player instead of a Celtic player on loan at Aberdeen and he bought into what Derek McInnes created up there. That move was great for Derek, great for Celtic and great for Ryan.’
As ominous as the prospect is of tackling a side on a run of ten straight victories, Rice views every challenge as an opportunity.
If the odds are stacked against them taking anything in the east end of Glasgow, their manager feels each of his charges is potentially only one blinder away from a defining moment in their careers.
‘I keep saying to my players that you never know who’s watching you and it doesn’t matter where you’re playing, whether it’s
Livvy on Saturday or at Parkhead on Wednesday,’ explained Rice.
‘I signed a couple of players out of the blue because they’d caught my eye. Hamilton will always be a place where you’ll get an opportunity and people know they’ll see young kids playing in competitive games.
‘If you’re going to sign a young player, what’s better than going and seeing him playing against Celtic and Rangers or Hearts and Hibs to see how he handles it? This an opportunity for my young players.’
Christie, for one, can vouch that often that is all you need.