Why oh why did Celtic sign Scott Allan?
Way back when this deal was being speculated on I predicted, in more than one article, that it would prove to be paper talk, that Allan would never sign for our club and that it was little more than a means of embarrassing us when he eventually pulled on a Sevco shirt.
When it became clear that Hibs would not sell him to Sevco, I predicted that he would wind up in the English Championship.
There was no way, to my mind, that Celtic were going to buy him. It was the last position on the pitch where we needed to make a purchase; it would be a luxury signing at best, and I hadn’t even reckoned with Tom Rogic, who’s return after we’d bought Allan seemed to make even less sense in the grand scheme of things.
With Rogic playing so well, I sometimes ask myself; is this why Scott Allan isn’t in the team?
Was he simply the unluckiest player in football, a guy who was signed to play only for another player, one who had been out on the fringes, to prove himself in an unexpected way?
But the answer is no, and I know the answer is no.
Scott Allan has never been a proper member of the Celtic squad.
He’s been on the outskirts almost since he was signed. He played a few times at the start, but the manager has always looked reluctant to put him in the team and has preferred him in the Development Squad.
It’s almost as if he was a player imposed on the manager, one he didn’t really want.
Now the press is linking Allan with a move.
Yes, this is partly their usual nonsense in the run up to the semi-final, but Allan is rated south of the border, more rated than he appears to be at Celtic Park, and it would be strange, indeed, if his situation up here wasn’t the subject of a lot of transfer speculation.
His time at Parkhead appears to be ticking down.
Yet the same could be said for Ryan Christie, who we recalled from Inverness and have not given a single start to.
This outrageous situation is one of many reasons a lot of us have no faith whatsoever in the manager; to bring this kid from a club where he was playing every week, to let him toil away in our Development Squad without a whiff of the first team … it seems scandalous and wasteful and doesn’t compute, at all, especially when he’s naturally left sided and we’ve played numerous players (including Allan) in that position rather than give him a chance.
We have some very promising young players in this squad. Those we’ve developed are patient and will wait for their chance, but Allan was playing first team football every week before we signed him and stuck him in the second string. So too was Ryan Christie.
The Inverness player definitely has a future here; not even this manager can ignore him forever.
Scott Allan, on the other hand, I wonder about.
This signing was inexplicable.
His absence from the first team squad is not.
I always thought this one was wasteful and un-necessary, and whilst I’m not quite ready to write him off – indeed, you can’t have watched him and not know he’s got something – it looks more and more like a story that’s not going to have a happy ending, not whilst Ronny Deila is at Celtic anyway.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he left in the summer.
I would, however, remain baffled as to why he was signed in the first place and that’s a question that requires an answer, whatever the player’s future might be.