Scott Allan… Loved by many at Easter Road, loathed by some unforgiving punters for trying to engineer a move to the tribute act, perpetually linked with a return to Leith and now in the last throes of his ill advised 3 year spell at Celtic. Will he try to rekindle his career at the club which gave him the platform to showcase his talents following an equally uneventful spell down south such as he’s currently experiencing?
The smart money would say yes. He’s nowhere near the Celts first team and despite rumours of interest from Neil Lennon he remains the black sheep of the Parkhead family.
Allan is an enigma. On his day the midfielder is unplayable and plenty thought he’d be a Brendan Rodgers type player when the Irishman took over from Ronny Delia but to say things haven’t worked out for him is probably overstating the 27 year old’s contribution.
The fact of the matter is Allan has only ever produced anything of quality in the green and white of Hibernian. His loss at the start of the 2015/16 campaign was seen as a hammer blow to our promotion hopes although the seemingly never ending saga throughout that particular summer took an ironic twist when the self proclaimed “Rangers” man did indeed head West but to former Old Firm rivals Celtic.
He did make a few cameo appearances in the Hoops under the tutelage of the hapless Delia but his skirmishes with first team football all but died after the Rodgers appointment.
A loan spell with Dundee during the first part of last season was seen as a chance to regain match sharpness and perform to the level expected by many pundits but once again Allan failed to produce on a regular basis and found himself back at Easter Road for the remainder of the campaign come the January transfer window after a strange three way transfer involving Scott Bain and Simon Murray was concluded on deadline day.
Almost immediately he returned to his mercurial best. A quite fantastic strike in a 2-0 win over Hearts won over many of the doubters and haters. Allan was sublime, creating chances, linking with the front 2 and most importantly, playing with a smile on his face again and with the casual arrogance supporters love.
He’s sat out the first half of 2018/19 despite rumoured attempts at Hibs trying to agree a deal with Celtic in the summer.
Despite the signing of Ryan Gauld, Neil Lennon would love to see Allan make it a permanent return to the club. He’s a player that simply “gets” what Hibs are all about and his appearance at the recent Edinburgh Derby shows he still has the Hibees in his blood.
Where else could he go? Aberdeen have been mentioned but the question would remain whether he could perform at Pittodrie as he did at Easter Road or would the Dons fans encounter the Dundee version?
Should Allan make his third homecoming it would be foolish to think he wouldn’t reproduce the performances to which we’re all accustomed.
