The Latest Turnbull Story Has Crystalised The Thinking Of A Lot Of Celtic Fans.

Agents love to talk up their clients, and nobody should be in the least bit surprised at that. But when I read the other day that David Turnbull’s agent is claiming big money interest in Italy I laughed. David Turnbull cannot get into the Celtic side right now, playing in the SPFL. Much as I like and respect him as a player, that is not an accident. He isn’t consistent enough.

This week, the press reported that AC Milan were interested in him and valued him at £7 million. And I thought it was only the English clubs who were mad enough for that. The story has since been denied; no great shock.

If we got an offer in that region for him the club wouldn’t hesitate to accept it, and they’d have been right to. If we get any decent offer we should grab it.

David Turnbull isn’t a next level player. This is why a lot of fans are relatively nonchalant about whether he signs a new deal or not.

As time goes by and thoughts turn more and more to those guys with whom a lot of our support has an understandable emotional wish to see succeed, the clearer it is that some of these guys, like Mikey Johnston, and Turnbull too, just won’t and nothing will change that.

Even at the SPFL level there are doubts about these guys. At European level those doubts are more less confirmed as fact. On that stage they are deadwood; worse, they are deadwood which this board looks at and claims that they give us “options.” I don’t know anyone who didn’t shudder at us bringing Johnston on in midweek.

As we’ve lamented before, we have too many players at Celtic and so a cull at some point is inevitable. If Rodgers is going to do it right, he will be utterly ruthless. He will look dispassionately at that team and ask himself only this; are these guy good enough to take us to the next place we want to be? And Turnbull is in that category where you cannot be sure.

As a smarter guy than me once said, “Whenever there is doubt, there is no doubt.” Turnbull has been at Celtic long enough that the question should have an easy answer. If it doesn’t that’s probably answer enough. This might be the time to move him on, in fact if we’re serious about progressing it definitely is and we should take whatever money we get.

Yes, these players tick boxes on the Champions League registration list, but that’s not a good enough reason to keep them here. You’re as well having a less than full squad than having one filled with players you can’t rely on and who are more or less only there to check a box, and the more of them are “available” to the manager the less work some above him believe they have to do, and the less money they believe that they have to spend.

This squad stinks of mediocre options.

Turnbull is better than a lot of them, but if everyone is fully fit, he’s going to struggle for games. We want better options and if we get them, he falls even further down the pecking order. That means he is useless to us, and we’re only dragging out the inevitable. And the inevitable is him leaving us at some point and a lot of people – him included – feel like it was just a waste.

I like Turnbull. He’s a decent player and he’s shown amazing courage and resilience to come back from the injury which almost prevented Celtic from signing him and which kept him out of the game for a year.

When I’ve written about mental resilience and the right attitude, especially in the context of young players, Turnbull is one of the examples I talk about as having the proper stuff, the combination of determination and professionalism to make it.

Without those things, all the skill in the world isn’t enough. Without the appropriate level of skill to reach the top, those other elements are only worth so much.

I never wanted to see him fail here, no-one ever wants to see a player at their club fail … but if we’re cutting this squad, he might well be one of the casualties. If his agent wants to take this matter out of our hands … that might not be the disaster he seems to think that it is.