You ever notice that whenever Celtic lose a promising youth player that the media wants to talk about it for a week, and go into what it’s wider, long-term implications are? Well, isn’t it odd that today there’s very little in the media about how Ibrox has lost one of its own most promising young players to Aston Villa?
The headlines would be slightly different, of course, it was the player they have been trying to send down there, the “£25 million” man. But it’s not, and so this is a pretty severe body blow to them because the player in question really is a bad one to lose.
Rory Wilson was the star of their academy, and although he announced last month that he wasn’t signing a new deal with the club the news that he’s going to Villa will sting. Gerrard obviously knows this kid and made his move for him.
Wilson is no small loss, no matter how the press may want to play it down. He scored a staggering 49 goals last season and they had high hopes that he’d commit his long term future to the club.
To no avail, as the lure of England proved too much.
Imagine for a minute that this was Celtic.
Imagine we’d lost a player who has excelled not just for their youth sides but for the Scotland under 18s. The press would be asking real, searching questions about us. Hell, they do it every time we lose a young player.
When Ben Doak left us for Liverpool, we got days of negative headlines and inquests into how we’d failed to keep him. We actually gave Doak first team football and had him on the periphery of the squad. Ibrox made no such effort.
Their record at developing youth is almost uniformly dreadful, with only Patterson bucking the trend … and they shipped him out at the first available offer.
Losing a top young striking prospect – and you’ll notice how few of those Scottish football actually has from the state of the national team – is a massive blow to them. Reports today linking them with Ross Stewart – last season up here in 2021 for Ross County – as their Morelos replacement shows how bare the cupboard is over there.
How they’d have wished those headlines about Villa signing one of their young players had been about Bassey instead.
The fantasy over this is so great that Charlie Miller was in the papers today adding £5 million more to their “asking price” … it now stands at a whopping £30 million.
That would make a guy with one reasonably good season under him the third most expensive signing in the history of the club.
Pigs might fly.
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Another young man realising what is happening over there jump before the boat sinks.