This afternoon a story has broken that suggests we’re in the race to sign Notts Forest defender Joe Worrall.
If you’re scratching your head and asking “Who?” then you’re not the only one.
He’s not exactly a household name yet, but at 21 years old he’s already played 50 plus games for their first team and has been capped by England’s Under 20’s and Under 21’s.
Worrall signed a three-year deal in 2017, and Sevco are alleged to think they can take him on loan.
They believe this because he was allowed to go on loan in 2015-16, when he went on to play for Dagenham for 14 games. He was allegedly being tracked by Premiership clubs last year, and Burnley were said to have had a £10 million bid turned down.
A £10 million bid. Think on that.
Does he tick the boxes for us? No more so than McKenna does; he would be a punt and, as you can probably gather, an expensive one if he wanted more than a loan. English transfer prices are pretty ludicrous even in that league, and I think most Celtic fans, not to mention the manager, would be pretty appalled if this ended with us developing yet another player for somebody else.
So where has this story come from?
Not surprisingly, it’s The Record who is linking the player with a move to Ibrox, but Celtic’s so-called interest didn’t come from there; in fact, it came from the site Football Insider, which, incredibly, is an even less trustworthy source than our own home brand of decorative bog-roll. They have the player interesting Aston Villa and West Brom too, which seems to me a far more likely destination than Scotland will be.
The Celtic link appears to be little more than nonsensical speculation.
Of course, if Worrall winds up at Ibrox before we have a central defender it will not stop the media running their own twisted variation on the theme; these rumours, no matter their origin, will be more than enough for a series of ludicrous “Player snubs Celtic to join the Gerrard revolution” headlines.
You can read these people like a book.
It’s all the more reason we should get our own business done, quickly, and deny them such an opportunity.
