Not every signing turns out to be a sterling success. Some surprise you in good ways, but some surprise you in ways that are less impressive.
Celtic’s success stories are known to us all … but who remembers the mistakes?
Who remembers the moves that didn’t work out?
Here are some of the signings which should have been a success … but which turned out to not be all they were cracked up to be.
Brace yourselves, because there are some shockers in here.
Freddie Ljungberg
One of a number of players on the list who we signed too late in his career and didnt get close to seeing at his peak.
Freddie signed for us on a week long trial, and showed enough in that time to convince the club to offer him a deal.
But he played only eight games in total for us, and was allowed to leave on a free after eight months and a mere eight starts.
It was one of the poorest returns we were to get from a “name” footballer.
Thomas Gravesen
We signed him from Real Madrid. He was an iconic footballer who had all the skill necessary to be a huge, huge hit.
He cost us a cool £2 million, with a three year deal and the offer of a one year extension.
He scored against Rangers.
It looked like a fantastic piece of business … and it all went badly wrong.
Once he lost his place in the team – to Evander Sno – Martin O’Neill was amazed at how little work he did to win it back.
He lasted two years. He only started 29 games. He scored six goals.
But he should have been a legendry Celtic player.
Instead he’s a footnote in our history.
Juninho
The diminutive Brazilian genius had wowed them at Middlesbrough before moving to Parkhead and he looked a certainty to be a huge hit, particularly after turning in an inspired performance against Rangers at Celtic Park.
But that was the high point, and the only one.
Martin played him wide right instead of through the middle, and he only made 14 starting appearances for the club.
He didn’t even last a season.
Amido Balde
A Portuguese striker who had played in the team that got all the way to the Under 20 World Cup Final in 2011.
He arrived with a passable scoring record and was said to have enormous potential.
We never saw it.
He played 24 times for us – people find that hard to believe – and scored just three times.
He has drifted about a lot after leaving, and injuries and illness have limited his total game time.
Teemu Pukki
A decent enough footballer both before and after Celtic but the weight of expectation visibly crushed this guy.
Some said we played him out of position – trying to make him into an out and out striker instead of a winger – but wherever he played it didn’t work.
He went to Bronby, started scoring regularly, and wound up at Norwich where the fans love him and he finds the net regularly.
A mystery, this one.
Marc Antoine Fortune
This guy cost us more than £3 million.
Some of us were never convinced because his scoring record was less than sterling before he arrived, but Tony Mowbray had watched this guy at close quarters and was his first choice signing.
That should have made us confident, but it was to be a symptom of the lethargy of the Mowbray tenure … he was a really bad signing who didn’t come close to making an impact, although he scored against the Ibrox club.
He scored 12 goals in 39 games in his debut season … Mowbray didn’t survive it and Neil Lennon didn’t fancy him.
He played four in the next campaign and never scored.
We released him on a free, at an eye watering loss.
Du Wei
The national captain of China.
Before Celtic and afterwards he was a regular player in their top flight.
He’s still playing there now.
What started out as a loan deal due to last six months was terminated after one – yes one – start; it was the notorious defeat at Clyde, where Roy Keane also made his debut.
Keane lasted longer on the park that day and at the club; Du Wei was substituted at half time and was never seen at Celtic again.
The sight of Clyde players waltzing by him at will told Gordon Strachan all he needed to know.
Roy Keane
How could this one possibly have gone wrong?
Keane had always said he’d like to play for Celtic one day, but perhaps we left it too long.
A handful of decent games could not erase the horrible memory of his debut.
For all that, he was at Parkhead for six months and appeared only sporadically. His high point was a dominant Celtic – Rangers display where he was absolutely imperious. If we’d got him three years younger he’d have been a monster signing.
But he was too far along the road to retirement already.
Rafael
A Brazilian international defender.
What could possibly have gone wrong?
Everything as it happened.
We later found out that we had been well and truly done over with this signing, and that was clear right from the start.
Absolutely awful to watch, worse to remember, what’s most amazing is that after we got shot of him he spent six years in the Brazilian league, playing over 150 games for Corinthians, Minerio and Botafogo.
Martin O’Neill summed him up best; “I like footballers who are not like you,” he told him. “I like footballers who can play well.”
Indeed.
Morten Rasmussen
A prolific goal-scorer in Denmark before we signed him, he was a highly unusual signing that never came close to working out.
He should have been a tonic after several failed efforts to find a proven striker, because he did know where the net was … but he played a handful of games for the club (13 in total) and scored only 3 times … including a goal on his debut.
It never got that good again.
We eventually loaned him out (to three different clubs) before he returned to his native Denmark and promptly started scoring again.
Jo Inge Berget
He was a Ronny Deila signing who never quite made it; eight games and two goals doesn’t adequately describe how poor it was.
But before – and indeed after – he played at Celtic Park this guy proved himself to be a very decent, highly effective, footballer out wide.
He created and scored goals.
When he signed for Molde and we drew them in Europe there was a certain inevitability about his scoring … and he did, of course.
Twice. At Parkhead.
Those goals were the ones that ultimately knocked us out of the 2015-16 Champions League.
Efrain Juarez
He’s still only 30, and still playing regularly.
He plays for Vancouver in the MLS, but much of his career was spent in his native Mexico.
He was a major footballer when we signed him, one who appeared on the verge of big things.
And although he had graft, and dig, and a bit of flair about him, he just never settled in Scotland.
He was also not going to be more than a bit-part player and he needed more.
We loaned him to Sociedad, and he eventually found his way back home, playing most of his career games at Monterrey.
Harald Brattbakk
What the Hell went wrong here?
He played precious few games in a Celtic shirt, but still managed to score 20 goals, including one of the most famous in our recent history, The Goal That Stopped The Ten.
His record at Celtic was one strike every three games.
What most people don’t realise is that his scoring exploits in Norway were absolutely legendry; he averaged a goal a game in his four years at Rosenborg.
His overall career in that country is exceptional; before and after his spell at Celtic he bagged 294 goals in just over 400 matches.
His career total is 329 goals in 481 games.
So what happened? He didn’t suit our playing style for one, and there was no willingness to build it around him. He also didn’t cope well with the pressure of playing for our club.
But I get the impression that in this Celtic team he’d score a barrowload.
Like Berget, he also came back to haunt us; he hit two past us when we returned to Trondheim in November 2001.
Scott Allan
Whatever happened here? Scott Allan had a lot going for him; he had skill, he had potential, he was a determined and focussed footballer who had a choice between Parkhead and Ibrox and although a boyhood Rangers fan chose Celtic instead because we’re a bigger club and offered him a better stage.
For all that, it didn’t turn out.
He’s had a couple of spells out on loan, where he’s definitely looked a player, but never cut it for us.
Koki Mizuno
A strange one this, a signing that promised much but delivered very little. He was a Japanese Under 20 international and looked to have all the tricks. The signing was an effort to continue to capitalise on the Asian market, but there was a good footballer there as well, or so we thought.
It was a shame that he didn’t make it.
He played a mere 15 games for us, and although he showed flashes of skill it wasn’t there.
He went back to Japan where he still plays in the second tier.
Derk Boerrigter
A disastrous signing, and he’s in the papers at the moment moaning about the way the club “ruined” his career. He cost us £3 million. He played just 16 times. He said we made him play through injuries. Thank God we did, or his total appearances for that money would have been in single figures.
Whether he was mentally weak or simply made of glass I do not known.
He didn’t arrive with the best injury record, but he had a flawless football pedigree at least as far as it went.
It should have been different. It was a nightmare.
Derek Riordan
A Scottish football cautionary tale, and one that we still don’t know the full ins and outs of.
Derek Riordan should have been a sensation in a Celtic shirt. Over two spells at Hibs he bagged more than 100 goals in little over 250 games – an excellent scoring ratio – but in between, at Celtic Park, he made 32 appearances and scored 8 times in in three years.
Off-field problems stalked him, his fitness was ever in question.
He went back to Hibs, and then his career trailed off … a move to China didn’t pan out and he came home to do a procession of lower-league teams on one year deals.
Edson Braafheid
Not many Celtic players has ever won a World Cup silver medal, but this guy has.
So what went wrong?
He arrived on loan from Bayern Munich and played just ten times for the first team squad. Looking at his career, you can actually see that outside of his home nation, Holland, he’s never been that great, never settled in to any club, has never been a regular.
He has played for Lazio, Hoffenheim and Bayern Munich aside from Celtic, but his best spells were at Utrecht and Twente.
Carlton Cole
Carlton Cole is a mystery. He was a regular player for nine years at West Ham before coming to Celtic, playing no fewer than 25 matches in his final season there in the EPL. At Parkhead he signed a two-year deal. He was gone inside 12 months, having played just five times and scoring just once.
As a free transfer it seemed an absolute no brainer.
It turned into a football cautionary tale instead.
Some say he came to Parkhead just a little too late; he left and went to Sacramento, where he didn’t do much better, and finished his career in Indonesia where he didn’t score a goal.
Olivier Kapo
He signed for Celtic on an 18 month loan deal in the 2010-11 campaign.
It didn’t produce much. In fact, his contract with us didn’t even last three months.
The winger, who had played for top clubs in Europe including Juventus and Monaco, should have been a smash hit. Indeed, he looked pretty decent. But he left under a cloud, with allegations on his side that we’d tried to change the contract and allegations on ours that he just wasn’t that good.
Whatever the truth, Kapo never hit the heights again aside from at one excellent spell at his first club Auxerre.
He then went on to play in Greece and Poland.
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