The Media Seems Determined That Matt O’Riley Will Leave Celtic This Summer. But Will He?

One of the stories which comes up over and over again, and which reared its head this week, was about Matt O’Riley and the possibility of him leaving Celtic this summer. I say “possibility” although the way the media talks about it, this is a certainty.

This week it was the turn of an ex-Ibrox player to give his approval to it; I mean, do we care? I’m sure their ex-pros would love to see us lose every one of our key players. But he is, after all, not the first person to make this assertion, and it makes a change from it being ex-Celts like Chris Sutton discussing it as if it’s a foregone conclusion.

The thing is, it isn’t. It’s possible, for sure, but there’s no certainty of it. Whenever O’Riley himself talks about this he speaks highly of the club and how much he enjoys being here. If we’re in the Groups of the Champions League there will be no need to sell anyone and the attraction of playing in that competition will be all the greater.

The interest for Atletico Madrid seems to have been real. But they might not necessarily be looking for his type of player in the summer. They may have other options, options they decided to explore in light of Celtic’s position on this.

They were not the only club who were interested, of course, but they were the only club which made a serious offer.

O’Riley has a contract until 2027. There is zero pressure on us to sell him. Zero.

He has not banged the drum to leave.

Let’s face it, if he was going to do that, he would have done it in January when the chance to go to Spain was there, especially as he knew it might not be when the summer months came around. In the interim his form has fallen off some, but not enough that any of us wouldn’t want to hang onto him for at least another year.

Celtic will definitely have a fee structure in mind beyond which we’d need to be realistic. But if Atletico aren’t playing the game who is going to offer that? A club in England might, but at that point the player’s own thoughts on it have to come in to play; will he want to go and play meaningless games in mid-table, or in a relegation dogfight?

He shows no signs of being possessed of an urge to get back down the road. Everyone talks about it as if it’s the be-all-and-end-all of football; that’ll be why their sole European representatives now are Aston Villa, in the third tier competition.

The interest from Atletico was a tribute to how well he was playing at the time. To get a move on that level, if they’ve moved on, he will have to give everything not only between now and the end of this campaign but into the next one. And that might be the way this works out.

It depends, of course, on what plans the manager has. If we get offered good enough and he has a plan for the money, then he might well sanction it personally. But a lot of water has to flow under this bridge for there to be a move; a club has to want him, Celtic has to be willing to take their offer, the player has to want it and the manager has to agree to it.

This is certainly not a foregone conclusion. There’s no real reason to believe that O’Riley will move, except everyone in the media seems to believe it.

But then they all believed Kyogo would go in the summer and he’s still here. We’d never have lost Abada but for the craziness on the other side of the world, and had the offer from Saudi not come in for Jota he would almost certainly still have been at Celtic Park.

They’d love to see what’s left of this team broken up. But that doesn’t mean it will be.

If Rodgers has won his internal battles, he will have plenty of targets in mind to make this team stronger. Win this title and there’ll be plenty of money to spend on them. At that point it’s up to him to sell his vision to everyone who is here. And then we’ll see who wants to stay.