It wasn’t so long ago that a sizeable section of the Celtic support would have baulked at the notion of Brendan Rodgers returning to the club. And even more recently, as his team slogged through the festive fixtures sustaining back-to-back defeats along the way, there was significant unrest over the way his team were performing.
After four wins in a row, including a seismic victory over Rangers, and with his team finally seeming to click into gear, everything once again seems rosy in the Celtic garden. Well, apart from the lack of singings so far in the transfer window, a third of which has now come and gone.
The blame for that though cannot be laid at Rodgers’ door, who has constantly preached the need for quality additions to be added to his squad during January. As he did with eerie resonance almost exactly five years ago, a month or so before he resigned his post.
Celtic fans who have seen this movie before may be fearing that Rodgers will again get itchy feet, as he sees his pleas for reinforcements to aid the Celtic cause in what is the tightest title race across both his reigns seemingly fall on deaf ears.
Whether Celtic ultimately do get the deals over the line that Rodgers wants this month remains to be seen, but for one of his former players, their fans better enjoy having him manage their club while they can in any case.
Stephen Dobbie is a massive fan of Rodgers having worked under him at Swansea City, and he still picks his brains for advice whenever he can as he takes the first steps in his own coaching career.
And such is his admiration for the Celtic manager that he believes it is only a matter of time before clubs with deeper pockets come knocking once again to try and lure him away from Glasgow.
"He had a massive impact on me,” Dobbie said.
“I still keep in contact with Brendan. When I took over at Blackpool for the last six games [as caretaker boss], he was my first call. I asked him what he thought, how should I approach it and that kind of thing.
"Anything I ever need coaching-wise, Brendan's always been at the end of the phone for me which is fantastic. He's brilliant and that's testament to the kind of guy he is.
"I'm not surprised at all [that he’s doing well again at Celtic]. When he came in at Swansea, I think he'd had the sack from Reading. He changed the whole dynamic of the club and obviously where we got to was brilliant.
"It's no surprise to me he went on to Liverpool and I believe he'll go even higher again than Celtic."
Among the attributes that so impressed Dobbie when playing for Rodgers was his attention to detail, and his ability to get the best out of every player under his charge.
That subject has been a major point of debate this season due to the fluctuating form of Celtic’s star striker, Kyogo Furuhashi, with many putting his limited impact in spells this term down to the tactics deployed by his manager.
Dobbie, though, having known the way Rodgers works, is far from convinced by the theory.
"Look, Brendan knows his stuff,” he said.
“He doesn't do anything without thinking it over a million times.
"That's what I took from him for my own coaching. There's always another way. It's not just set in stone for each individual player.
"He knows a lot about football, especially the little details. Obviously, I was a striker, and he ended up putting me back into number 10 because he just knew how to get the best out of me and each individual player.
"That's why we actually did so well. It was little details, like he speaks Spanish as well. When he was speaking to the Spanish players he was speaking in Spanish, and it was like 'this guy seriously knows his stuff'. He's a top guy.
"It's like anything, you've got to be so dedicated. I think Brendan got injured really early [in his playing career] and then went away to Spain and spent six months watching Barcelona training.
"He formed his own ideas and now he's got to where he's got to because he's a top manager."
Another major strength of Rodgers, according to Dobbie, is his man-management, a quality that has been evident this season already as he has put a figurative arm around the likes of Liel Abada and literally embraced Reo Hatate on more than one occasion as he worked through his injury problems.
Dobbie worked under the often-madcap Ian Holloway at Blackpool, and while his gung-ho approach and the methodical style of Rodgers differed in almost every way, that was one common quality they shared that ensured they wrung the best out of their players.
"Brendan and Ian Holloway were both fantastic in different ways,” he said.
"Brendan knew everything about football, whereas Holloway was like 'right, we're going to attack and if we get beat 9-8 it doesn't matter!' He just let us go and play.
"I think that's why the team at Blackpool did so well. The bookies tipped us to go down, but we ended up winning promotion.
"We just had that siege mentality to go out and score goals. They were both brilliant."
