Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has gone from scoring a winning goal on debut to barely getting on the field for Celtic. The 32-year-old has played only 12 minutes during the club’s post-split fixtures and did not come off the bench in Celtic’s last three matches.
Celtic won at Motherwell on Wednesday night and were due to play Hearts on Saturday afternoon before meeting Neil Lennon’s Dunfermline Athletic in the Scottish Cup final. Oxlade-Chamberlain’s limited involvement in that run is the clearest sign yet that his time at Parkhead is running out.
The midfielder arrived in Glasgow in the winter on a free transfer after being without a club since last summer. He had previously played for Liverpool and Arsenal, and his levels had seriously dropped since his days at Anfield, even though he still managed to make an immediate impact with that debut winner against Livingston.
That first night offered a different picture of what Celtic had signed. He looked like a player who could still change a game. Since then, though, the minutes have dried up, and the pattern has been hard to ignore. Three post-split matches have passed without him being used at all, which says more than any public show of patience from the club ever could.
For Celtic, the late-season schedule leaves little room for sentiment. The team are chasing results in the league and then a cup final, and the choices in midfield have already been made. For Oxlade-Chamberlain, the issue is simpler and harsher: when a player can only find 12 minutes at this stage of the season, there is not much left to read into it.
His case now feels settled by omission. Celtic gave him a route back into football after months on the sidelines, but the evidence of the post-split run points in one direction. Unless something changes quickly, the former England international has become a short-term answer with no obvious long-term place at Parkhead.
