Kieran Tierney: What did we learn from defender’s Celtic return?

There was a collective groan from the stands when Tierney went down just after an hour into this stodgy win.

Worries from the latter stages of his first spell, and much of his time with Arsenal, about his fitness crept into the collective consciousness of Celtic fans.

In the final season of his last spell in Glasgow, Tierney started 19 league games and missed a large chunk of the season with a hip injury before heading to Arsenal, where he had an equally troublesome time with his fitness.

Last season, Tierney played fewer than 500 competitive minutes across 20 games, having missed the first three months of the season with a hamstring injury sustained while playing at the Euros for Scotland.

But having been taken off during the first competitive start of his second spell at Celtic, Rodgers assured supporters the substitution was purely precautionary.

“He’s still building his fitness,” Rodgers told BBC Scotland. “He hasn’t played a lot of football in the last few years so we have to manage him.”