HE was left a little red-faced and subjected to remorseless ribbing by his Bournemouth team mates when he was compared to Cristiano Ronaldo after an audacious back heel in a Sky Bet Championship match against Huddersfield Town last month.

Yet, it is certainly fair to say that his move to the Vitality Stadium in August has helped Ryan Christie to get his mojo back, if not scale Ronaldo levels of excellence, and enhanced his prospects of featuring for the national team greatly going forward.

Christie often struggled last term as Celtic surrendered their vice-like grip on all three domestic trophies in Scotland and flopped spectacularly in Europe.

The man who had scored in the Euro 2020 play-off final against Serbia in Belgrade a year ago this week was possibly selected for the Group D opener against the Czech Republic at Hampden in June on reputation not form.

The playmaker was replaced by Che Adams at half-time in that 2-0 defeat and sat out the subsequent meetings with England and Croatia.

However, he has impressed since joining Bournemouth. He will be hoping to start in the final Qatar 2022 qualifier against Denmark in Glasgow tomorrow after serving a one match suspension and in the play-offs next March given how well he is performing at club level.

With no fewer than eight of his fellow squad members being just a booking away from picking up bans, his resurgence on the south coast of England is certainly timely for manager Steve Clarke.

“I have enjoyed it,” he said at the Scotland training camp in Spain earlier this week. “It has been everything I thought it was going to be. The boys have been flying as well and it is pretty easy to join a team when that is the case. Just to go out and play with them, to go out and win games, is very enjoyable.”

The official Bournemouth Twitter feed posted ‘top that Cristiano’ after his moment of magic against Huddersfield and it did not go unnoticed by his fellow players. “I don’t know where that came from,” he said. “I have been hammered for it by all the boys in the changing room.”

Christie’s £1.5m move to the Championship outfit surprised many people in Scottish football who felt he could have moved to a Premier League side. But he has not had cause to regret his decision.

"There were multiple reasons why I decided to move on,” he said. “But the new challenge at different places was definitely one of them. It's been a bit of a breath of fresh air and I am really relishing the football side of it.

"I try to promote Scottish football as much as I can to all the Bournemouth boys and nobody really knows much. But then I am actually quite surprised at how much I didn't know about the Championship.

“I knew Stoke City had a big stadium, but then you visit places like Bristol City and it's a massive ground. It's been to play at these places as, although Scotland has some great stadiums, after all those years it's nice to have a change.”

A former England international has been instrumental to the impact he has made at Bournemouth. Christie seems similarities between Scott Parker and his former manager Brendan Rodgers.

“He has been brilliant,” he said. “I spoke to him on the phone before I signed and I was really impressed with him there. But since then I have seen the way he takes training and the intensity he sets and been even more impressed.

“He played at the top level as a player and has done really well as a manager. He is so passionate. Every time he steps onto the training pitch you know you have to be right at it. Like I said, the boys have been flying and a lot of that will be down to him. Long may it continue.

“I would say he is like Brendan in terms of the kind of preparation and detail he puts into games. He is very switched on. I like to have managers who are like that, I feel like in this day and age you need that.

“You need to be constantly performing. He is a wee bit more hands on than Brendan was at Celtic. As I said, you can see how he has done so well in his managerial career so far.”

Christie played under Ange Postecoglou for several weeks at Parkhead before his transfer. He has not been surprised to see his old team mates put their shaky start to the 2021/22 campaign behind them both at home and abroad. He predicted they will go from strength to strength under the Greek-Australian coach. 

“Before I left I was able to get a wee taste of Ange’s training and I tried to be quite vocal about how much I enjoyed it and how good he was,” he said.

“The longer he stays in the job, the more successful Celtic will be. And yeah, they have had some good results, good performances and some good results in Europe too as well to keep them in the hunt. I am keeping an eye out for all the boys I am pally with up the road and hoping they do well.”

Christie cheered on his countrymen from the stands in the Zimbru Stadium in Chisinau on Friday night as Scotland beat Moldova 2-0 to secure second spot in Group F and a Qatar 2022 play-off spot. He is keen to be involved going forward and is determined to help the national team reach their first World Cup since France ’98 next year.

"The World Cup is on everyone's mind now,” he said. “The first thing we said when we met up for the Euros was that we wanted to do ourselves proud. But we also said we didn't want to be a one-hit wonder.  We wanted to make that the benchmark and make it a regular thing that we qualify for tournaments.

"We can't just rest on things. We want to keep pushing. Getting to the World Cup is that step harder but with the group we have, and how well we are playing, we feel like we can definitely achieve it. We have a young vibe in this team and everyone is desperate to qualify again after the Euros.”