SOMETIMES, the familiar can be taken for granted. An old comfortable chair. Your favourite pair of slippers. You rarely give them much of a thought, but they are always there when you need them.

Whether Nir Bitton would appreciate the analogy is debatable, but what cannot be denied is his importance to Celtic, and that his contribution after a decade of service at the club can sometimes go unnoticed.

One man who is certainly keenly aware of his worth is the one man that really matters, with his manager Ange Postecoglou singing the praises of the Israeli after another solid showing in the midfield against Hearts at Tynecastle on Wednesday night.

“He’s been great,” said Postecoglou. “As with all these things, people look at things differently if he has been here for a while.

“I came in with fresh eyes and a new perspective and I just look at how they are training and playing.

“Nir has been great since I got here. If you look historically, he hasn’t played that many games in the last three or four years in the league.

“He is going really well and playing in a position which I think suits him and suits us.”

His best position has been a point of debate for several years now, with former manager Neil Lennon deploying him regularly in defence.

“Nir has played a lot at centre-back, but for us, I feel he is much better suited to the midfield,” said Postecoglou.

“He has that experience and leadership because he has been at the club for so long.

“I think he has been fantastic for us.”

The leadership qualities that Postecoglou references are also vitally important to Celtic in his view, particularly in the absence of captain Callum McGregor following the serious facial injury he picked up in the Scottish Cup win at Alloa.

As he did earlier in the season when McGregor was missing for a period through injury, Bitton not only assumed the armband, but assumed his role as the leader of his team in accomplished fashion. It seems clear that his teammates value him just as much as his manager does.

“I’m not that involved in the dressing room to see that, but I kind of know he is an important part of the leadership we have in there,” he said.

“He has taken Liel Abada under his wing and he has helped the young man to adapt here because they both have had similar experiences.

“But yes, he knows the environment here, the culture and the football and he looks as though he is enjoying his football, so that’s a positive.”

The role of Bitton within the Celtic squad is no accident either. Postecoglou has brought young and exciting football players to the club with an eye on building towards the future, but he is all too aware of the value of experience in nurturing that young talent.

Getting the balance right between those two groups to create a functioning unit is something the Celtic manager has spent a great deal of thought in achieving.

“That is really important to me,” he said. “I get that I am judged on immediate success and I understood that, but I have always loved building teams for the medium to long term. Getting a group of like-minded staff and players together.

“We are bringing in guys who I think have their best football ahead of them. Hopefully, they can grow together and achieve good things.

“This year is about bringing them to the club and forming a bond with the ones who are remaining. Understanding the club and building a team that is going to be successful for a number of years.

“To me, that’s the most important thing, but I also understood pretty clearly I couldn’t just have this year as a building process. We had to have some success this year and that is what we built towards.

“That’s important that when you are bringing in young guys, the leaders in the group have the right values and can steer them through the process.

“Guys like James Forrest have grown up here. He can talk through his own experiences and all of those things are really important.”

Bitton is likely to captain the Celtic team once more as they take on Dundee United at Celtic Park this afternoon, with Postecoglou relieved not to pick up any further injuries in the bruising encounter at Tynecastle on Wednesday night.

He will hope for more of the same come this evening as eyes start to be cast towards the crucial match against Rangers on Wednesday night, but he isn’t allowing any sneaky glances towards that fixture until his side have taken care of United. Particularly as Tam Courts’s men have already left Celtic Park with a point this season.

“We have been good at looking at what is directly ahead of us,” he said. “We knew Tynecastle would not be easy and we got the job done and now we focus on Dundee United which is the same.

“They came here earlier in the season, frustrated us and we dropped a couple of points at home which we don’t want to do.

“So we want to play well and make sure we perform against them. There’s no point looking too far ahead.”