Scott McKenna Would Not Be The Worst Bit Of Business That Celtic Could Do.

The rumour mill is always busy. It is always churning something out. For years now, the rumour mill has constantly linked us with a move for Scott McKenna. In light of his current status – available right now on a free, and Scottish home grown so that he enhances the European squad – we were always going to be linked with him this summer.

McKenna is a not a world beater. But he might fit the style of play better than Lagerbielke, and he might have a chance of being fit more often than Nawrocki. As all of us are aware, the Bosman market can sometimes throw up good names, and only foolish club does not look to utilise it wherever possible. McKenna would be good business on a free.

He would certainly enhance the squad. He would, in my estimation, be a better bet than Scales or Welsh, and since the job in front of us is fairly big and both Nawrocki and Lagerbielke look to be heading out the door it stands to reason that we’d want to try to bring in two centre backs in this window, or we’ll end up with Scales starting a lot of games.

We all know that cannot happen. He’s done a fine job up to a point. That point has been reached. As a backup we can get by with him. Beyond that, we’re not putting ourselves in the best position for Europe and beyond that we can. Scales and Welsh are good players to have in reserve if the need for them arises. We need better. McKenna is better, and in terms of that European squad he ticks the box we need if we’re to avoid filling the squad with youth players.

There will be some predictable moaning about this suggestion, with a lot of folk offering the view that he’s not good enough. But look, we need to name a 25 man squad for Europe and eight of those players need to be home grown. Four of them need to be produced right here at Celtic Park. At the moment that’s Welsh, McGregor, Forrest and Ralston. There is the outside chance that we will name Mikey Johnston. But beyond that, who? Greg Taylor at left back. Possibly Scott Bain, but that’s as close to the team as I’d want to see him get.

If Johnston gets named, we’re still one short. If we don’t include him, we’re two short. We can either fill those two slots with experienced players or we have to draft in the reserves, and that’s the reality of it, and you hamstring yourself when you do that.

The requirement for eight players trained in Scotland is a fact of life. It’s there whether we like it or not, and there aren’t any obvious players here at home who help us tick that box, and so it falls on us to look for who is out there somewhere else, and McKenna virtually screams off the page when you look at the list. This, to me, is an absolute no brainer.

I’m not saying that it will happen. I’m as clueless as anyone out there as to what Celtic is planning to do, but there are clear and obvious considerations here and that is one of them. And what’s more, if we don’t move for him the club at Ibrox almost certainly will, because their situation is far worse than ours is in this respect, and getting harder by the day. The need for them to sign at least two home grown players is obvious; Liam Kelly will be one of them.

But McKenna is such an obvious second option for them that it would, in addition to being a signing that enhances our own team, be a good bit of pass-blocking, something that would really aggravate them over there and make life that little bit more difficult for Manneken Piss and his plans. I’m not saying that’s the reason we should do it, I like McKenna as a player anyway … I’m saying it’s an added bonus of doing a deal which seems reasonable anyway.

If we’re not at least thinking about this then something is way off.

The Bosman market is one that we use too seldom, and this summer, for reasons having a lot to do with English clubs cutting costs, there are better options on there than I’ve seen in a while. We have to be thinking along these lines. I will be frankly astonished if we don’t bring in at least one player in this category, and there are good reasons to think that McKenna will be the one we go for.