Transfer Talk

That’s not true at all mate haha he played 28 games, 22 with over 45 minutes. 5 goals. And all from a position that he doesn’t play in when he plays with our youth team.

 

Callum McGregor only went on loan to notts county when he was 20. Stats that aitchison has produced down there say he has more of a chance of making it with us than many of our other youngsters. League 2 is a hugely physical league, and the main attribute you’d of looked at when seeing aitchison before he went down there is he was too small and weak. Wouldn’t write him off, could be the surprising standout after this loan. Similar to how cal Mac was after he came back

 

Difference is McGregor played in league 1 and came back the top scorer for Notts County, following season made 30 appearances.
Stats from Aitchison tells me he needs another loan out to succeed. Not going write him off yet but he isn't ready yet for us.

 

Scott McKenna has be rumoured again in the Athletic. I was always against signing him but I am starting to warm to it as long as the fee is relatively low. He's good in the air, aggressive and a threat from set pieces. Also Griffith's recently said that McKenna is the defender he most hates playing against which I always think is a good sign

 

That's blown me away..

Bring him back..

 

Not sure I would take him don't think he improves us personally

 

Turnbull returned to first-team action in February after recovering from the surgery and two weeks later, signed a contract extension until 2022. Despite this, it’s been suggested to The Athletic that Celtic may move for him again this summer; indeed there’s some interpretation that the contract was Motherwell protecting Turnbull’s value in expectation of interest from them or another suitor. Though, again, market fluctuations because of the pandemic, not to mention the uncertainty over his injury, might mean he’d be available for below the reported £3.25 million fee of last summer. There are lingering concerns over how badly his surgery, and the ensuing seven months out of football, may have affected his development. Celtic have been monitoring his recovery closely.

He also plays a similar role to Ntcham — as a goalscoring No 8, or more advanced as a No 10 — though it’s unclear for the moment whether a move for him would be dependent on Ntcham leaving.

As outlined above, McKenna, Hickey and Turnbull all fit Celtic’s eternal policy of buying Scottish football’s brightest prospects; as well as being players they know very well, and in the club’s view, being relatively risk-free purchases they’d be confident in having a first-team impact. None of the three are by any means certainties to sign, but sources cite them as having featured in discussions with the club.

Celtic will also continue to pay close attention to players in English academy set-ups frustrated by the lack of a first-team pathway, especially as the costs of such signings would be minimal or compensatory. Agents and young players have noticed the success of this model, most pertinently the example set by Jeremie Frimpong, who signed from Manchester City’s under-23s last September and made his senior debut with Celtic less than a month later. Increasingly, Celtic are billed as an environment where promising youth players are trusted and get promoted to the first team. West Ham United’s 18-year-old striker Veron Parkes is one such player.

If Celtic are to buy outside the UK, it’s been suggested to The Athletic that two of the markets they would be most inclined to look at would be France and Eastern Europe, though they naturally also have players on shortlists from other regions.

Celtic have had a sizeable French-speaking contingent for the best part of five years now. After Dedryck Boyata was the first pioneer as a French-speaking Belgian in 2015 (along with his less prominent countryman Logan Bailly and Switzerland’s Saidy Janko), there followed Moussa Dembele (who arrived in 2016), Ntcham and Edouard (both 2017), and Christopher Jullien (last summer), who have all being success stories. They’ve also benefitted off the pitch, with having an established group of native French speakers helping new arrivals integrate into the first team and adapt to life at Celtic, and a genuine community spirit has developed.

Though Celtic’s two Ivorians, Vakoun Bayo and Ismaila Soro (as well as a third, Eboue Kouassi, who left last month for Genk in Belgium), haven’t yet much of a first-team impression, The Athletic understands the thriving French-speaking contingent helped them adapt. Celtic are conscious of the contingent’s success and are keen to sustain this area of the squad, regardless of whether one or more of its members leave in the next window.

Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 are considered markets representing relative value for money, with French football’s combination of physical intensity and technique an appealing sell for Celtic, who require players with the physicality to handle Scottish football’s rigours but also the technical ability to succeed domestically and in Europe. Though Jullien, a £7 million acquisition from Toulouse, is one of Celtic’s most expensive signings ever, he’s regarded both within the club, and seemingly, by a majority of the fanbase, as having justified that fee already after his shortened debut season.

Head of football operations Nicky Hammond and new chief scout Gary Penrice both have experience in the French market, too. Second-tier Ligue 2, in particular, is considered something of a still-untapped market for a club in Celtic’s position and one, by multiple accounts, the club are keen on exploring in future.

The Eastern European connection is less evident than that with France’s but makes sense as a market Celtic have scouted regularly for the past two decades; especially Poland, where the top-flight Ekstraklasa is viewed as a low-cost, high-value league from which they have recruited players including Artur Boruc, Maciej Zurawski and, this January, Patryk Klimala. The club also showed interest in two Polish full-backs over the past 12 months: Lech Poznan’s 21-year-old Robert Gumny and Michal Karbownik, 19, of Legia Warsaw. It’s been mooted that Celtic might maintain a shortlist of players from this region over time.

This naturally means Celtic are precluding other new markets that might also represent value for money because they hadn’t the time to develop those leagues into a coherent framework, or the opportunity to scout their players in-person. For example, The Athletic understands that recruiting players from the academies of some of La Liga’s premier clubs was a strategy being considered before the pandemic — in effect, replicating the one already in use to seek out unsettled youngsters in England — but it was still only at a hypothetical stage by March, so is unlikely to be integrated into this summer’s strategy.

The key question underlying Celtic’s summer 2020 transfer window, the elephant in the room threatening to stampede at any second, is whether they could adequately replace players of Ajer, Elyounoussi, Ntcham, Forster or Edouard’s calibre by sticking to their criteria of players they know well, and with a smaller budget.

Whether McKenna could adequately replace Ajer, Turnbull take Ntcham’s place, or Hickey come in and immediately challenge to be the first-choice left-back, is a matter of opinion. It’s why, although Celtic are open to offers for Ajer, Ntcham and more or less every other player, the club’s ideal scenario is retaining all their services for one more year.

Anyone within Celtic’s budget for this summer successfully filling the void vacated by a departing Edouard would be a near impossibility, which is why him staying for another season would be the club’s runaway preference — even in the event of a large offer. It could be a case of there being few major, starting-XI-ready incomings, and the club aiming for there to be few major outgoings.

But for a club hierarchy that prioritises staying in the black and long-term sustainability, there could be an argued position of needs-must in selling at least one of their biggest assets, especially if Celtic fail to qualify for the Champions League proper (and the financial windfall which accompanies it) for the third year running.

This will be a tense summer in terms of player recruitment and player retention that Celtic have to get right.

Everything is, of course, mediated by their having to tighten the budget and trim the squad to compensate for the loss of gate receipt revenue but there persists an expectation among fans — and pressure from them — for the club to build on the successes of last season, particularly as they target a historic and unprecedented 10 league titles in a row in 2020-2


Athletic article

 

"Athletic understands..."

"Its been suggested to The Athletic..."


Sean Daleer understands the Athletic is full of pish.

 

Brutal.

 

Heard from a mutual friend of Scott's that he's out Aberdeen in the summer fee for around 2.5million

 

Imagine spending £2.5m.to get nearer Sevco, ffs.

 

Doesn't mean celtic I hope we don't sign him he's honking

 

Whit

 

I think he's suggesting we're spending £2.5m on McKenna and as a result the scum will close the gap on us.

 

Ah fair enough..

He's right as well. McKenna is the donkeys donkey..

 

Pretty unimaginative signing if it comes to fruition.

Plus points are he's left sided, big tim, knows the league and won't eat into the wage budget.

Still think we should be setting the bar much higher.

 

That's 4 more than I could've listed mate

 

McKenna is a poor man's Grant Hanley, and that takes some doing. We are needing a no nonsense centre half to partner Jullien in my opinion, but it's certainly not McKenna. Got a heid for hammering in fence posts and would run through brick walls, but that's his limit.

 

I heard £2.5m for McKenna tonight too and £400,000 for hickey