The rumours surrounding Kieran Tierney moving to Spain continue to gather pace. It looks almost certain that he will depart London this summer, for an even sexier destination. It is a credit to this kid that he has already earned such acclaim in his career. He is only going to get better and Spain is the ultimate place for him to prove his quality.
Kieran is entitled to bask in the glory of what he’s achieved here. But he’s not the only one who should be feeling good about things. He is a product of our youth academy, and that it has turned out such an exception footballer reflects well on us.
You only have to look at the evolving farce of Nathan Patterson, who the media hyped to a fare-thee-well and who Everton took a major punt on, to see how this all could have turned out. If Patterson flops that will damage their club’s standing. He’s the only major youth project they have sold on … it will not look good if he doesn’t succeed.
Our own academy produces player after player after player. Aside from having a great reputation for developing stars who we buy, we now have Tierney as solid gold proof that that academy can turn out genuinely world class performers, although anyone watching Callum McGregor consistently knows that this was never really in doubt anyway.
Celtic’s credibility only increases with this thing. The club’s reputation for being a good place to find players is already sterling. If Tierney goes for mega-bucks, to one of the two biggest clubs in the world, then that can only enhance that reputation … not to mention that it will put another large chunk of change into the club accounts.
How envious it must make people elsewhere, and how Everton, in particular, must be cursing their luck at having spent decent money – not massive money, but decent – on a footballer from this city who isn’t going to make the grade.
Win some, lose some I guess.
Are we writing Patterson off now? I thought he looked alright for Scotland. We’ll see how he settles. Very different beast though as wasn’t ever a first pick at Ibrokes whereas KT was pushing for the first name on every team sheet.
Reputations get built this way and we can start expecting higher fees for our homegrown talent. Especially post brexit as they have no visa issues we may see the demand rise.
He’s learnt the dark arts of football down south,be perfect for his game in Spain
Good article, however I don’t think we have a sell-on clause for Tierney. I might be wrong, but I think that’s why we got £25 million for him, rather than the £17m or £18m that was originally quoted. We negotiated a higher fee but with no sell-on.
Yes,not as easy as it seems this buy low sell high lark .Not a good look,first one in ages bombing regarding the Nathan Patterson transfer.
I’d rather we stopped promoting ourselves as a selling club. The huns got approx £500 thousand for Gilmour as a promising kid. Its not exactly brilliant watching our own academy youngsters getting snatched up by European teams before they’ve even started their adult careers at Paradise, so no increase in fee for them.
Good luck to KT, we let him go when he said he’d stay if the club wanted, but moving forward – will ye no come back again KT. HH
We will get more for the sell on clause in Tierney’s contract than what sevco got for getting rid of the shortbread man to Everton.
It’s a bit unfair writing off Nathan Patterson already. He’ll take time to settle like many including KT.
You are wrong on Paterson he is a quality player with proper coaching will only improve and done sevco a favour with fee delaying administration BUt not stopping it just a matter of when