Callum Wilson of West Ham United goes forward during the Premier League match between West Ham United and Brighton and Hove Albion at the London Stadium in Stratford, on December 30, 2025. (Photo by Kevin Hodgson/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Every now and again, there is a transfer story you want to believe because it sounds good, it sounds logical, and it sounds right. At the same time, you do not believe it because it also sounds far-fetched and slightly mad. Celtic fans are in the middle of one of those right now with the Callum Wilson rumour.
This one has been stalking Celtic since before the window even opened. I do not know where it originated, but I did not think there was a word of truth in it at first. Now it appears that some sort of offer may actually have been made.
There will be plenty of naysayers if that proves to be the case, but I am not going to be one of them. I think Callum Wilson would be a sensational signing for this club as a short-term answer to a long-term problem.
He has every quality we are currently lacking up front, including the kind of top-level experience you need if you are going to go head-to-head with two other sides in a title race. He is exactly the kind of player you could throw straight in at Tynecastle and feel confident about.
I have no idea whether the offer is serious. I have no idea what kind of financial package the club has put in front of him, if any. Saudi clubs will table offers that dwarf anything else available. He has played at the top level in England for years and should already enjoy financial security for life.
If money drives the decision, there is no debate about where he goes. If, however, he wants to play in front of 60,000 supporters, take part in a knife-edge title race, win trophies, and carve out a heroic final chapter to his career, then this move makes sense.
I am not kidding myself about the finances. Celtic cannot match what he earns now. What the club can offer, in the short term, is the thing footballers claim to want more than anything when they start out: a place in a winning team. A chance to lift trophies. A chance to write themselves into the history books.
Celtic remain a special club, even amid their current dysfunction. The fanbase still carries that weight, and this season could yet become something special. That remains the unique selling point.
This idea is neither impossible nor ridiculous.
If money does not dominate his thinking, Celtic can put a tempting proposition on the table.
If money dominates everything, nothing Celtic offer will ever suffice.
Even if he seriously considers the move and the role of leading a final surge towards the title appeals to him, the club would still need to make a substantial offer. He would walk straight into the squad as the highest-paid player, and that is simply the reality of the situation.
I genuinely do not know what this story amounts to. I have a nagging suspicion that it could be a smokescreen. It would not surprise me if this was the club playing its usual games, creating a distraction, or pretending ambition while carrying on as normal.
Supporting Celtic does that to you. Suspicion becomes automatic when you have watched the same patterns repeat themselves over and over again.
If, however, this is Martin O’Neill driving the bus, if he has finally dragged these people into reality, and if he has convinced them that a statement signing is necessary, then this is exactly how you do it.
Wilson is not the type of player who would come here for a holiday. He has the experience, physicality, strength, and mentality this squad badly needs. He is a big-game footballer, and this is a big second half of the season. There are questions over his fitness; that’s why he wouldn’t be the sole answer but as part of the solution to our problems he’d definitely do fine.
The concerns we’d have about spending serious money on a striker like Kieron Bowie do not apply here. This is the type of player, and the type of personality, who can carry a title challenge.
I am not getting carried away. I am not getting overly excited.
This is Celtic, after all, and this club has an uncanny habit of pulling the rug from under you. I would also worry about what the knock-on effects might be. I wrote earlier about the danger of selling a first-team player to fund transfer business in this window, and if the price of Wilson is losing someone vital and ending up no better off in terms of squad depth, then it would be a dreadful idea.
That said, if this is real, if a proper offer has gone in, if the player is interested, and if he signs on the dotted line, then yes, that is the lift everyone has been waiting for. That is the calibre Celtic should be chasing.
He is 33, but elite players now perform well into their mid-thirties.
This is the SPFL, not the top end of La Liga. A fully fit Callum Wilson walks into almost every Celtic side of the last decade. It makes perfect sense.
Which is exactly why it is so hard to believe.
Given that I look on this site as more intellectual and less likely to reach for pitchfork and torches for differing opinions, I will take the chance and offer this.
Celtic should grow a pair and be the first club to abandon “Women’s Football”. Anyone who endured Chris Evert and co’s, Rodgers-like endless baseline passing in tennis will know that soon and by some European law they will demand and get equal billing and rewards.
This will mean clubs will have to run and finance two football teams when they can hardly run one.
The well from which the finances will be expected to come will soon dry up as families will be expected to pay for two season tickets so by that calculation the quality such as it is will be halved for each team.
I make no apologies as someone who for the last 40 years has predicted the problems that have arisen by the manufacturing investment in a certain country who are now flexing their muscles.
Only this is on a much larger scale!
It’s a no from me. His injury record is worse than mine! We have enough players on the treatment table.
MON has today distanced the club from links to Wilson.
Bad idea, would be another sick note
Another older striker when we have one already ?
He’s more of an injury risk than a younger one ,say the Croatian who’s 26 , although we’ve a league to win and potentially £40 million CL money so let’s go for both !
Wait until the end of the window when big deals are done?
Didn’t we do that with Dolberg and ended up with no strikers for Brendan.
Get lots of fecking quality in the fecking door CFC as this is our last chance to SOS, even MON looks alarmed.
We can halt this monumental disaster of a season right now by chucking lots and lots of money (our money) at quality players.
Btw no Green Brigade no party ! Get the guys back in to create the historic atmosphere we are ‘world class’ for and stop this utter playground farce right now.
Well said! I will also add my tuppence worth to your last sentence on the Green Brigade.
2 – 3 Weeks ago that parasite Brian Wilson called for unity. As far as i’m aware The Collective dropped him a letter seeking talks. I don’t even know if he has responded to them yet but i see no effort on his part to achieve that “unity”. He’s just another parasitical bullshitter.
If the green brigade want back maybe they should come out and offer some concessions. ie. for a start, drop their hate campaigns and make an announcement as such.
They seem to be all in and hoping for a new board that will forgive them and they can run riot again. Not just here but ultra culture has gone too far and is now under attack. We are lucky our fans are not banned after the flare thrown onto the pitch at Villa park.
Our game in Rotterdam 10,000 ultras banned which helped our players but not good for Feyenoord. PSG facing section closures.
Is that what you want?
Radical change is needed even if we oust this board the new guardians cannot accept the GB in its current form.
Time for them to make an existential decision.
Every match day over the sound system we hear ‘Let the people sing ‘ then they ban the singers. Consequently the place is a library .
This appalling for the team and our reputation as a place with a world famous atmosphere.
The Green Brigade (like everyone)have made mistakes but learn from it and now we need them in more than ever.
Let the people sing you hypocrites.
What hate campaigns ?
Volp said
“What hate campaigns?”
Volp previously said
“pigwatch is hateful as was the banner after the 7th october attack which was very nasty for the victims and their loved ones”
You got a short memory Volp. The GB have hatred for many groups and people Celtic supporters included.
Their time is up unless they seriously amend their ways. We cant have neds running about CP unchecked refusing to be policed while carrying out illegal activities.
That many of the new wave of supporters at CP cant create an atmosphere without them is not an excuse to let them back in. They need to make major concessions and apologise for their behavior..if not they are finished!
Is pigwatch still active?
One banner in error isn’t a ‘campaign’
so why exaggerate about that ?
‘Neds’
Listen to you old bean.
Yes let’s ban all working class yobbos from Parkers as it should only be for us middle and upper classes what what.
Tell me how does one ‘refuse to be policed’ ?
You make them sound like the Brit Army no go zone of Free Derry in 1972.
The only people I’ve seen ‘running around CP’ are the players old bean.
‘Apologize’,’major concessions ‘,’seriously amend’,’they are finished’.
Who do you think you are to be dictating terms on behalf of Celtic fans or CFC ?
You appear prone to severe exaggeration dear boy.
I admire every man, woman and child who hates oppression, armed occupation, “racial” supremacist ideology put into practice, the death cult IOF militia who have a bloodlust for all non-AshkeNAZI people who don’t recognize their supremacy or chosenness., I stand with them and against the propagators of hasbara lies like those you spread on here daily. I hate injustice, I hate those who shoot dead starving children from fake aid trucks. Hatred for evil is healthy in humans Mojo. Are you and your kind not human too? Your comments about young people’s time being up reek of a tendency to dish out violence of the most severe kind to any and all who offend your psychotic feelings. Are you a tough guy or a disturbed psychopath I wonder?
I love everyone who resists by any means they deem necessary those who indulge in imposing famines on entire peoples designed to exterminate them all – any Celtic fan should be on board with that one and instantly recognize that those on the receiving end of such barbarism and inhumanity while at the same time being denied access to their own foodstuff grown by them and clean water, are facing exactly what the founders of Celtic FC witnessed happen to their Irish brethern at the hands of a similarly savage and brutal regime that still, like you, pines for the good ol’ days when you could be left in peace to complete your genocide without pesky outsiders getting involved or the targetted group daring to resist. Because when they resist they continue to exist and you lose so you resort to type, play victim on their behalf and label the dying children and women burned to death in refugee camps as “dead terrorists”, and the hundred thousand more who can’t even be left in peace in their graves because the vile bastards who killed them are now bombing their final resting place and then sending bulldozers in to remove any remnants of flesh, bone or other evidence that they once existed as the beautiful living beings their loved ones remember them being. You Zionist destroyers of all that is good and holy deserve every ounce of hatred your ideology has brought your way and more! Even Hertzl had hatred for his own kind in certain areas of Europe and used language so pejorative to describe them that even I felt was over the top.
Are you a grown man, Mojo or a snivelling little runt who just does what he’s told, turns the other cheek when the first one is smashed with a baton so the coward hiding behind a badge and a uniform can pummel the other one too? Who are you to appoint yourself the arbitrator of other people’s vociferous shows of empathy and decide to collectively tarnish every one of them as hateful thugs who refuse to be policed? Do you as a grown man allow other men to police you like you are some animal or a criminal when all you are doing is having fun and supporting whatever your favourite team in Glasgow happens to be? I bet you do, you cow-towing forelock-tugging King-loving Zionist-hugging hun-friendly gentile-hating piece of work. But the rest of us have limits and as grown men God help anyone who transgresses them be they in uniforms with shiny buttons and helmets or otherwise.
And your last comment about this group of youths (not all, but most are) being finished….if you are hinting again at violence being your method of finishing them then you will have your own day of reckoning with a far more capable force than those young lads in green and white who wave big scary ultra flags at you as they enjoy their football so don’t say you weren’t warned you sanctimonious, drivel-spouting joke.
October 7th is so close to my heart my eyes well up with tears of pride and joy when it comes around each year. You and your ilk don’t enter my thoughts – you are irrelevant. Go take that to your hasbara commander and don’t forget the hate-police too and thought-crime task force and leave an anonymous tip with the ghosts of Nil By Mouth and Bhoys against Bhigotry you blowhard. HH & LOW LIE!!
Fhloyd. Your last outburst about how you love the regime in Iran was an eye opener. Anything goes with you as long as the destruction of Israel is the goal. Iran are murdering thousands of their own people but I’m sure you can put a positive spin on that.
Maybe you can find some warped reason to celebrate that same as you celebrate the murder of jews on oct 7th.
The naughty boys of the GB are not being threatened with violence, what clown told you that? They have been told change your ways or you are not welcome. Thats the way it is..they have a choice and I dont mind which one they choose.
Fhloyd best you dont come back to CP until you get some help son?
Good luck.
Volp, you are so out of touch. I’m guessing you have never been in the standing section at CP. Things have to change and they will. The GB think that a new board will welcome them back, as they were. Unfortunately they are not acceptable in a modern football ground in their present form.. All over europe ultras are being barred from stadiums in their thousands.
Football grounds should be happy places safe for everyone. No need for the hate we see for certain groups.
Look at G. Fhloyds warped comments above for a flavour of it all!
…no place for it.
Let’s be honest this board don’t care about the Football game they are only interested in the Finance game.
Sell one of the Japanese players,or two if they get lucky, sign 1 new playet and a couple of loan players and make 5 million profit.
Pat each other on the head and say job well done.
Finance 5 million win the league a couple of million
Football looses again.
Fans still buy season tickets and the shit keeps on going.
Only way this ends is Fans boycotting all games.
Lose to Hearts and the league is gone.
Maybe the board lovers will wake up then and join in with the collective.
Another day another dollar… to get interest on… to be saved !
The only transfer business we are going to do is on loan.or in the bargain basement, while we punt Meada and Hatate. Our team will end this window weaker I have no doubt in that. Our executives have no plan, no vision, and no clue. I’m 52 and have been going to Celtic games most of my life, I haven’t been since October last year, mostly due to work commitments but I can usually move them if I wanted to. This season took me back to memories of the old guard in the boardroom and Macari in the dugout and I have lost my appetite for funding these clowns. I can’t believe the scale of the downsizing, it is genuinely depressing.
Sorry James, disagree with you on this one. I’d prefer we brought in Bowie. We’ve got more than our share of crocks on the treatment table. We need investment in the squad.
Besides, i don’t think there’s any truth in the rumour we’re interested in Wilson. And *IF* money is the driving factor then our board would already be aware of that.
MON said, just a week or so ago, that we need 2-3 signings AND possibly a marquee signing, something Wilson is not. Never mind a marquee signing, we will be lucky to get 2 ordinary signings through the door. We’ve already got the first one, a loanee ffs.
Or was i the only one who heard him say “a marquee signing”?
It’s typical SMSM. CW trying to get out of current club. SMSM put 2 and 2 together and get 2! ? So one flys a flag with more strings attached than a parachute. The others “it’s been reported” and all the SMSM get their coverage before reality bites that it’s all a load of nonsense.
Celtic are well known from PL days for being cheapskates and last minute shoppers. That coupled with MN being the bumbling old No Mark who’s not even the decision maker means any selling club just ignores MN faxes until the last day and then sells him an overpriced pup or agrees to an exorbitant loan price which they would probably have sold the player for in the first place! New Year. Same Old Celtic!
James I understand your thinking but Wilson has never been a prolific scorer at any club he’s been at. He was at Coventry for 5 years out on loan to Kettering and Tamworth and between the three clubs he scored 22 for Coventry in 49 games, 1 for Kettering in 17 games and 1 for Tamworth in 3 games. He got his move to Bournemouth where he scored 61 goals in 171 games over a six year period and finally at West Ham he’s only scored 4 in 17 games, that’s 136 goals in a 16 year career which is an average of 8.5 goals a season. If you add to that the fact that he’s injury prone and hardly a prolific goalscorer then you’ve got to ask yourself is a guy like that really worth shelling out big wages for? I personally don’t think so, but it’s all about opinions and everybody’s opinion is as valid as mine, it’s not often I disagree with you as you always talk sense about the club and I comment regularly on the Trinity Tims podcast about how you guys thinking is on a par with mine and the majority of Celtic supporters but in this case I wouldn’t sign Wilson as there’s better deals to be done.
Torky I agree I wouldn’t be too keen on Wilson with his injury record. He has had a good career, beginning with Coventry in League One where he was their top goalscorer, and then helped get Bournemouth promotion to the Premier League, where, when fit, scored a lot of goals, then he had a good spell at Newcastle again with the proviso, when fit. If they do sign him I hope he is a success, but I just worry that he would join our other class striker Iheanacho on the treatment table.