Scott McKenna
An obvious one this, and one that a couple of seasons ago would have seemed like the perfect bit of business.
Indeed, all the planets seemed to be aligning just so … and then Aberdeen, flush with ego and the stupidity that thinks because Celtic can command a premium for its player that every team in Scotland suddenly can, slapped a ludicrous £8 million price tag on him.
End of interest from Celtic Park.
On the surface, anyway.
Aberdeen could have gotten a tidy sum from Celtic for McKenna, and they might even have gotten a nice chunk of change from someone in England, but that kind of demand is plainly bonkers and not even the cash rich clubs of the EPL and the Championship were remotely willing to part with money like that for a Scottish Premier League player outside of Parkhead.
The price-tag did the player no favours either; for the last couple of years I’ve watched him be steadily eroded by that mammoth valuation and all the pressure that goes with it. So much so, in fact, that there are two other defenders on this list I’d consider in front of him.
McKenna looks a shadow of the player many thought he was going to be.
He has stagnated at Aberdeen and hasn’t coped well with being rated in that fee bracket. He knows his chances of the sort of move he wanted are less than they were … and there is no way Celtic would even pay the £5 million we might once have offered to get him.
The more I see of him the less impressed I am these days, but that’s a consequence of a lot of things having gone wrong for him. He is, of course, one of the Aberdeen Eight, facing a lengthy ban from the SFA for breaching health protocols … which further dilutes his value.
What would a reasonable price be for McKenna now? £3 million at most, which is quite a drop from the days when Aberdeen thought they might even get eight figures if they could somehow start an auction. He’s not worth anywhere near that.