According to the ancient wisdom, as espoused by Oscar Wilde, “When the Gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.”
Every player who has left Celtic for England of late has boasted about doing it for “football reasons.” In the case of Kieran Tierney, no-one even argued. It looked like a no-brainer.
There was little argument that he was making a good move.
After all, this was a mammoth club, one that could boast about a great history, both distant and recent.
They were Champions League Group Stage regulars.
You couldn’t argue that this was a great move for Kieran and one where his “football reasons” argument seemed entirely justified. This was the sort of stage on which he could strut his stuff.
I don’t believe that Tierney will have many regrets.
He has money reasons for wanting to go as well, or why would he have been so big on the idea of moving to Everton the year before? When he won an FA Cup winners medal it looked like a superb choice.
But Arsenal was on a downward trajectory before he arrived there and it was summed up in the 0-0 draw against Villarreal the other night, which not only removed them from Europe for this season but, shockingly, counted them out of Europe for the next campaign too.
Arsenal are 9th in the EPL, and they may finish lower.
Their season has been a bigger disaster than ours.
Those who warned that club about the perils of getting rid of the steady hand of Arsene Wegner have been proved right in spades; far from taking the club forward, the changes have sent them reeling backwards at a rate that must be alarming to their owners.
It must be alarming to Kieran Tierney as well. He would have laughed if he’d been told that going to Arsenal would jeopardise his chances of playing in Europe, but the club now faces a grim reckoning for that failure.
It is likely that key players will demand to leave, especially if they don’t’ see any sign that the club is on a path back towards winning things.
It would not surprise me one bit if Kieran Tierney was one of the players who wanted to go.
He can probably pick his club at this point, and the only question will be which one could afford him.
Leicester may be tempted to go for him if they have the resources for it; there is little doubt that Rodgers would love to have him in the ranks there.
This, obviously, is good news for Celtic because we will of course be entitled to a large chunk of the future transfer fee, with re-sale clauses now commonplace whenever we let someone like this go.
But it should also serve as a warning to any player who leaves Celtic thinking the grass will be greener in the EPL, even if they do manage to reach one of the “big” clubs and not some mid-table or relegation battler.
Because the money might be good, but a lot of things can go wrong down there and there is probably no more unpredictable a league in Europe.
Kieran will not regret the move as such … but he will be shocked at how it turned out.
He dreamed of more Champions League nights … wet Wednesday’s in Fulham are what his immediate future holds instead.