St Johnstone boss believes Anthony Ralston is rated ‘very highly’ by Celtic manager Neil Lennon

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Anthony Ralston has left Scottish Premiership champions Celtic on loan to sign for Tommy Wright’s St Johnstone – does he have a future under Neil Lennon?

St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright is confident that Anthony Ralston will be a fine addition to his squad after the Celtic youngster arrived at McDiarmid Park on loan for the season, speaking to the club’s official website.

Two years after he was tasked with marking Neymar in the Champions League, Ralston has been deemed surplus to requirements by the Scottish Premiership champions – at least temporarily.

The highly-rated right-back looked to have the world at his feet back in 2017 with his performances attracting interest from a number of Premier League clubs, as reported by Scottish Sun, but the 20-year-old has struggled to build on that initial promise.

After being pushed down the pecking order by the arrival of Hatem Abd Elhamed, Ralston has been farmed out to St Johnstone to ensure he will be playing regular first-team football in 2019/20.

And with Wright clearly a big fan of the Scotland U21 international, Celtic can be confident that Ralston will return to Parkhead next summer with a lot more experience under his belt.

“I’m delighted. I think it’s a good piece of business for us,” said the Northern Irishman.

“Anthony has played in big games for Celtic including in the Champions League and he’ll add quality to the squad.

“Neil Lennon rates him very highly but he needs games and experience which he’ll get here. Hopefully he does well and I’m sure it’ll be a huge benefit to him long-term and for us short-term.”

Claims that Lennon is still an admirer of Ralston will raise eyebrows, simply because the Bellshill-born youngster has barely played a game since the manager returned to Celtic as Brendan Rodgers’s replacement in February. Even when Mikael Lustig, Jeremy Toljan and Cristian Gamboa left earlier in 2019, it never felt like Ralston was trusted by the Hoops boss.

But maybe there is more to this than meets the eye. If Wright is to be believed, Ralston could have a future at Celtic after all and this exit is only temporary.