All Around Celtic People Are Hyping Bosun Lawal. For Once, The Hype Might Be Real.

With no real signing news to interest us, attention has turned instead to the return of our loan players, and to the ongoing contact situations regarding a couple of members of the academy team. In one sense, these things might be interlinked.

Even during a busy transfer window, it is not terribly unusual to find the Celtic fans talking about a young player who has been out on loan, a young player who has made some waves. I’ll be talking about another of them later on today; but this particular one is a guy many of us haven’t had a chance to see much, except in the occasional pre-season fixture, where most thought he looked okay.

We’re talking, of course, about Bosun Lawal.

The ex-Watford boy is getting a lot of headlines, and it’s rumoured that the manager wants him back at Celtic Park to take a look at him. This is being generally well received by the supporters, most of whom think that the big lad is due his chance.

There is always a lot of hype when a young footballer returns to a club after a spell out on loan, especially if he’s got certain attributes that the team might find useful. This, after all, is why you send the kids out on loan in the first place; it gets them games and it builds their confidence and their fitness.

It makes them more substantial than if they’d been sat on the bench.

This has worked wonders for the likes of Callum McGregor, for Kris Ajer, for Ryan Christie and for Liam Scales.

These guys all came back to Celtic better players, definitely better than if they’d spent ages sitting on the bench. Who is to say Lawal won’t follow in their footsteps and go on to become a real player at this club? He certainly has the pedigree.

When we signed him, he was a highly rated academy player at Watford; indeed, the year before he signed for us he won their academy player of the year award and was tipped for the first team. There was interest from Chelsea and Fulham, but he opted for Celtic.

He spent two years in the B team and then he was sent out to Fleetwood for first team football.

He played more than forty games for them last year; some people will sneer and say “well it’s League One.”

He played more games in that league last season than Matt O’Riley did in the campaign before we signed him. People forget that’s where O’Riley came from, and Lawal was every bit as big a standout in that league as the boy we signed from MK Dons.

Lawal’s key position is in midfield, where he can play in the Callum McGregor role. He’s also played at the back, but I think that would be a waste of an opportunity; we need a hard, tough tackler who can play a bit in the middle of the park. He’s 6’2. He’s strong. He signed a new deal before he left on loan, so he’s under contract until summer 2026. This is his breakthrough year.

Don’t be surprised if he signs another new deal before the campaign gets properly underway.

That will tell us what we need to know.

In this I think he has been helped by the continuing confusion, and lack of progress, on the new deal for Daniel Kelly.

I know people at Celtic still expect us to sign him, I know that the player himself is said to want to stay, but the lack of forward progress has opened the door for others in the academy and B teams to show us what they can do … and Lawal might takes advantage.

As I said, there is always hype about our young players, but this feels like more than that.

I haven’t seen Lawal play much except in highlights, but those who have watched him for the Irish side say that he’s really developed into a top player in the last 12 months and that he is ready to return to Celtic and stake his claim; they claim that the hype is real.

And I’ll take that on faith. There was a lot of excitement inside the club when we captured his signature, and a lot of expectations about his cracking the first team after a period of development. That development is still ongoing, but I’m told he’s as ready to stake that claim as he’s ever going to be. This is a big summer for us, and for him.

Those two things look more and more as if they might be co-joined. As I’ve written previously, no club with any sense spends money in a position where they have a really top drawer youth player already … we have reasons to be optimistic about this one.