So the rumours from England appears to be taking solid form. Patrick Roberts is set to leave Manchester City this summer. The club does not value him as the kind of player they need to take them forward. For Patrick this is as sad as it was inevitable.
He doesn’t want to leave City having, as some would regard it, failed to break into the first team … but I think he’d be looking at it all wrong if he thought that way. He is a victim of the craziest league in world football … and he’s not alone.
Patrick took a chance moving to City in the first place, but it was never likely that it would be the club where he would make his name.
It took courage and self belief to do it – a little like Scott Allan moving to Celtic, when you think about it – and I can’t hold it against him, and he shouldn’t hold it against himself, that it hasn’t worked out.
But as I said in a previous article, Patrick simply has to recalibrate his ambitions and his dreams.
He will, without a doubt, have a sterling football career and it is my firm belief that he will, in the end, move to a top Premiership club. It’s what he wants to do in the meantime. It’s what he wants his next few years to be that will decide how he looks back on it all years down the line.
Huddersfield are the latest team promoted into the EPL, and who’ve started by threatening to throw money around like confetti. With all respect to them, it’s a joke that they’ve got the ability to outspend a club like ours by a factor of five to one or more.
I get sick of saying this to people who constantly mock me for speaking of Celtic as a massive club, but we are a massive club. Being in the richest league in the world does not make you one, no matter how much wealth you have. Huddersfield are a provincial team and it’s all they’ll ever be.
If Roberts ends up somewhere like that he’ll regret it a hundred times. Locked in a relegation battle from day one, they are as good as certain to tumble back into the Championship, and a lot of clubs that do that find the downward spiral only starts there. How many of them have gone straight down another division within two or three years? It’s commonplace.
Roberts is better than that. I have to think he is smarter than that.
As I said, he is good enough to play top flight football in England. Eventually. At a huge club, one where he’s going to be signed for the first team. But it’s what he does in the meantime that matters. He can join a club that’s in a fight for survival or he can spend that time winning trophies, playing in the Champions League, writing history … it’s all there for him if he wants it, at Celtic Park, where he’s already a hero. Next he can be a great. Then a legend. With the number 7 shirt on his back and the skill-set he possesses, if he stays long enough he stands a chance of being an icon. Henrik scaled those heights in just eight years.
Patrick has already been here two.
Forget money. Forget a gilded career. That is immortality.
He can have it all, and good money too.
Celtic and City still have to iron out the final details, and terms, of the deal. It will smash our current transfer record. But this kid is worth the risk, and with a hefty sell-on clause to benefit City there’s no way they don’t make a profit here, and no way we lose out.
The press will tell you that then, and only then, does the player have a choice to make, but think on that for a moment and you’ll see how ridiculous it is. Because the player might not fancy a relegation dogfight or a move to France or any of the other scenarios being trailed in the press. Patrick Roberts has Celtic in his bloodstream now, and that may well be the most important thing – indeed, the only thing – that matters here.
If he tells City that Celtic is his decision, you best believe the clubs will work it out.
In my view, that’s exactly how it’ll happen.