Anthony Stokes

Jordan Rhodes is in the EPL mate with Middlesbrough.

Think Stokes may be linking up with Danny Graham possibly.

Personally I think it was his time to move on.

 

Found his level, middle/lower end of the Championship.

 

When the * did Rhodes sign for Middlesbrough?

 

Stick to Celtic chat Dev, embarassed for you.
I forgot as well.

 

beginning of the year
about feb 1st:icon_mrgreen:

 

He gets to experience the skill and coaching of Owen Coyle the lucky sod

 

Is that a crown on his jumper?

His dad won't be pleased.

 

I wish him all the best. Hopefully he does well.

 

He talked a bit about him and Ronny's relationship halfway through this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SINb7Tz8Ss

 

Miss the guy already. Always had a soft spot for Stokesy, really thought he'd get a shot here but I'm glad he's found a new team who will utilize him and hopefully he does well in Blackburn!

 

Hopefully he will settle down and realise his full potential .

 

Owen Coyle admits he is delighted to land Anthony stokes for Blackburn Rovers




I am absolutely delighted to get Anthony Stokes on board
He had a number of suitors and we had to beat off a lot of competition from some big clubs for his signature. This is a boy who is a proven goalscorer, he’s a had a terrific career at a very high level and we’ve got him at a very good age. At 27, I think he’s coming into his prime.
He’s coming here hungry and motivated to do well, to continue to his improvement, to score goals and to help Blackburn Rovers be an exciting team.
Having played in front of 60,000 fans at Celtic, he’s got the mentality to stand up and be counted in big games, as he’s shown over the years, and to get a player of that calibre to the club, we’re absolutely delighted.
Hopefully it gives all of the Rovers fans a lift and shows that we’re trying to get goalscorers and exciting players to the club that they can enjoy watching.”

 

Hopefully can help them to the Barclays Premier League

 

* that. Rovers are pure * man.

 

Pretty sure Stokesy will help Blackburn to the Premier League, Owen Coyle must think he found a watch.

Rodgers is really going to struggle to find someone as dependable and experienced as Stokes to link up with Griffiths and operate so well from the left wing. It was utter madness to let Stokes go with such an important season coming up.

All the best to him. A Celtic man at heart and always will be.

 

If we cant find a better left midfielder or forward than Stokes we may as well all pack supporting celtic in and go support a ping pong club, Stokes was a decent player but we can and will do better. Best of luck to him

 

Its a hard league down there. Waghorn scored less than 35 in 160 apps in the championship

Doubt stokes will be a standout

 

Nah don't give a * about Blacburn, it was a * attempt at the Coyle always talking about the Barclays Premier League, but do hope Stokes does well.

 

Anthony Stokes admits he was 'gutted' to leave Celtic: 'To play for the team I supported was a dream but it's done now'





Anthony Stokes had been living on borrowed time for so long that the phone call that finally ended his Celtic career ought not to have arrived as a shock.
Yet before the Dubliner could digest the news that his six-year association with the club he loves had ended, he felt a sickening sensation that dulled the elation he had felt at helping Hibernian lift the Scottish Cup on the final day of his loan spell a few days earlier.
'I was gutted, I really was,' said Stokes. 'That's football. You move on because it's business. But it was more personal for me than them.'


Stokes says he does not know if it was new manager Brendan Rodgers or chief executive Peter Lawwell who made the final decision not to take up the club's option of a further year on his contract, but having drifted so far out of the picture that a six-month stint in Scottish football's second tier seemed the best use of his time, he knew change was inevitable.
Blackburn Rovers are now the beneficiaries of Stokes's striking skills and he sits down for a chat with Sportsmail at Ewood Park at the conclusion of a lively signing session for supporters on Thursday evening.
He has joined the Championship club on the back of a stunning end to last season when his two goals and man-of-the-match performance dismantled the Rangers defence and brought Hibernian the Scottish Cup after a 114-year wait.


Assured of legendary status at Easter Road for all time, it is at Parkhead that Stokes' own fondest memories remain preserved.
'I had a great time at Celtic, six really enjoyable years,' he said. 'The way it finished — that wasn't the way I wanted to leave the club.
'They had an option on me for a year. I'm not surprised but you might have thought they would have activated that and sold me.
'But for me this was the best scenario — I didn't want to go back there and not play. I'd rather just go. The last year was hard enough.
'I'm happy with my contribution. I won plenty of medals and really enjoyed my time. To come from Dublin and play for the team I'd supported all my life was a dream come true but it's done now.'
Signed from Hibs for around £1million in 2010, Stokes went on to score 76 goals for Celtic, the last of which came as long ago as December 2014 in a 4-1 victory over St Mirren.


Successive Premiership titles mean the Norwegian cannot definitively be described as a failure, but the team's repeated ineptitude in Europe coupled with the deterioration in productivity of several key players offer plenty evidence for the prosecution.
Removed from his favoured striking position to a role wide on the left, Stokes suffered more than most, as his declining goal tally would suggest.
'I played probably 90 per cent of the games in his first season but I was playing on the left,' he said. 'I always enjoyed playing with Emilio Izaguirre, who is one of the most underrated players at Celtic, but I just felt that when we were playing certain teams we should have been playing two up front — I really did.
'We were winning games but not convincingly. I said what I felt and it was common knowledge at the time — I thought it would have been better if he played with two strikers.
'If you're going into a European game and you want to play one up front, fine, or if it's a big game and you want to be slightly different.
'But you need to be dynamic and be able to change it from week to week. Not do the same things over and over. I felt it was getting to the stage that teams were working us out. We were going to go wide and then we were going to put it in the box.
'It's not like we had a big target man who was really aggressive in the air. Griff (Leigh Griffiths) has come on an awful lot with his heading over the last year, but there's another thing.
'If it wasn't for Griffiths and his finishing, I think that league would have been a lot tighter last season.'
Having performed competently on the left during Deila's first year, he found himself frozen out completely after a league win at Dundee United last August.
With the manager having stockpiled attacking midfielders and Griffiths thriving in the lone-striker role, there was simply no place for the Irishman in a rigid 4-2-3-1 formation.
While Griffiths has seemed well suited to operating as a lone wolf, Stokes has always looked best in a partnership, never more so than when he dovetailed with Gary Hooper under Lennon.
The pair would routinely combine to beat up domestic opposition and Stokes admitted he has never enjoyed his football so much as when he was partnering the Englishman.
'That's the best partnership I've had,' he said. 'Hoops had everything. He could hold up the ball, link with you and he provided assists. Not as many as I gave him, mind you!
'I knew where he would be in the box. We didn't have to call anything out. He knew I would always be there behind him. We would always get on an angle for each other on the pitch.'
While Hooper was Lennon's main man for the big Champions League nights, it took Stokes longer to gain the manager's trust on European occasions.
Yet if the pair's relationship ever appeared strained — Lennon publicly criticised Stokes for damaging the club's reputation by attending a memorial tribute to Alan Ryan, a notorious member of the Real IRA, and also voiced concerns over his application to rehab following injury — Stokes always felt the Northern Irishman was in his corner.
'I always felt like I got on with him,' he said. 'I never felt like there was a period when that changed. It probably took him a while to get to trust me in games. For the first year or two, I always found that after 60 or 70 minutes I would be the one taken off.
'It's a natural thing. Once you work with a manager for so long, you gain their trust and find yourself involved in the big games. I got that in the last couple of years with him.
'I felt I had a good relationship with him. The club was always very good to me and very supportive, especially Lenny as manager.'

 

Wish him all the best. Regarding his last few years under Deila, everything he said was pretty spot on. He has his share of critics but even when speaking out about Deila, he's never seemed ignorant or rude about his criticism. He tells it how he sees it but isn't trying to fuss about the past. Still love the guy, would rather have him here as 3rd choice over Ciftci but wasn't to be. Hope he kicks on at Blackburn!