If Celtic Are In For The Young Kid At Hearts Its Because Ange Sees Potential In Him.

James Wilson may or may not be a top player one day.

But if Celtic really are in for him, the media should cease any nonsense about us skipping in there to deprive Ibrox of a player. I wrote about this a day or two ago; we don’t do that stuff anymore at Celtic.

This involves spending money and we don’t do that frivolously or to annoy other clubs.

Wilson is 15. You don’t even know how good a player is going to be in terms of his talent at 15.

Potential is the easiest thing to judge wrong, and it doesn’t even account for what off-field habits the guy will pick up as he moves further into his teens, or how he copes with the pressure at a massive club. Manchester Utd are said to be sniffing so there’s a basic level of skill there … but the rest of it you just can’t know about, not this soon.

So I’m not terribly concerned either way.

If we’re in for him and these other clubs are too then it’s going to come down to whether he prioritises the money – if he’s doing that at 15 he’s not going to get anywhere, and you can tell that right away – then we’ll miss out and we should pass anyway. If he wants proper progression, he needs to bet on where the best place to get that is. I’ll give you a clue; it won’t be at Ibrox.

Watch January and you’ll see why.

But it might not necessarily be at Celtic Park either. Ange’s revolution is not going to have time to bed in any young player who doesn’t have an almost supernatural skill-set. One young player had a chance at it.

He chose to go to Liverpool, and you can see from every report that we’ve lost a cracker there and he’s going to be a real star.

That’s the level you need to be at. If we’re signing this guy Ange believes he’s a talent. Potential.

But Wilson is two years, maybe more, away from knowing if it’s real. I suspect that this is the kid’s agent playing games, or the media trying to hook us into a “snubbed” story, but the same reports also say we’re rebuilding the academy team … so perhaps this is just part of a greater plan and if it is then we should take it very seriously indeed, and it is good news.

But the media ought to stop with the suggestion that this is being done to stop him going to Ibrox.

This is a pitiful suggestion which says more about them than us.