Kieran Tierney has just two more games to play before re-joining Celtic this summer.
Arsenal fans are gutted that Tierney has left the club, but Hoops fans are absolutely buzzing that the Scotland defender is coming home to Paradise.
Tierney gave his final Arsenal interview earlier this week, and is now with the Scotland squad ahead of their friendlies against Iceland and Liechtenstein.
The left-back will earn his 50th Scotland cap if he features in one of the games, meaning he will automatically make his way into the Scotland Men’s International Roll of Honour.
Scotland manager Steve Clarke spoke about Tierney in his Thursday press conference and was quizzed on his return to Celtic.
Photo by GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty Images
Photo by GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty Images
Scotland boss Clarke discusses Tierney
Clarke simply explained that if Tierney is happy, then he is happy with regards to the 28-year-old coming back to Paradise.
And he revealed that Tierney keeps telling him to play him further forward after his goal for Arsenal against Southampton last month.
“I think more recently, it’s been the injury situation with Kieran. The one last summer stopped him having more regular game-time. The six months before that, he’d been in Spain with (Real) Sociedad and done really well.
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“And it was good at Arsenal that he stayed and ended up the way it ended up, by getting back in the team, getting regular minutes off the bench.
“He keeps telling me I’ve got to put him forward for set-plays because he scored a goal from one in his last game against Southampton!
“Listen, Kieran’s happy to be coming back up to Scotland to play. If Kieran’s happy, then I’m happy.”
Clarke wants Tierney to earn way more than 50 caps
Despite his injury troubles over the years, Tierney has been a regular for the Scotland national team and that is proven by approaching his 50th cap.
Clarke continued: “Obviously he’s shown over his career that he’s a top, top player. We’re lucky to have him. In recent years, he’s had one or two little injury issues that has probably restricted his number of caps.
“But he was one of those players that we identified very early when I remember going down to meet him in London after he just moved to Arsenal to speak to him about his role within the squad and what we expected of him.
“Since then, we’ve built a really good relationship. So we should be grateful that we’ve got him and hopefully he doesn’t stop at 50 and the caps keep coming because that’s what I set out to do was to cap a number of players that would be the core of this squad moving forward.
“And so many players in the squad now have made over 50 caps. Kieran is just another one to add to that.”