Calvin Miller and the Celtic connection. A mystery inside a riddle.

One of the baffling transfer stories that emerged in the aftermath of the January window was the one about Calvin Miller.

That story came initially from Charlie Mulgrew. No one else backed it up at the time, and no one has reported anything substantial since to prove it was ever as far along as suggested. But it still got an awful lot of coverage on various websites, and a lot of people took it seriously. Those people were clearly missing something obvious.

We had enough squad players as it was. Miller would not have fitted naturally into the team. Which of the top players who got us over the line were we going to drop for him? Where exactly was he going to play?

Nothing about the Calvin Miller story stood up. He did not fit the player profile we usually sign in any way, shape or form. Signing a former academy graduate playing at Falkirk seemed to me to be one of the more absurd stories that came out in the aftermath of that transfer window.

I never understood where it came from.

I was not surprised to see it rejected out of hand by the Falkirk hierarchy. Whatever people might have believed around Calvin Miller, Celtic never made an offer. Falkirk never received one, and the whole thing seemed strange enough that I was forced to speculate on how it could have happened.

I wondered, for example, whether Mulgrew had been fed a blatant piece of disinformation to trick him, expose him or embarrass him a little bit. But he stuck steadfastly to his guns and claimed he had it on what he thought was rock-solid authority that some kind of deal had been discussed, perhaps even almost done.

Yet Falkirk continued to deny that this was the case.

Miller’s contract was due to expire at the end of next season, so there was no obvious reason why Celtic would not simply have bought him in January or lined up a move for the summer if the story was true. But of course, instead, he has signed for Hearts.

I have already read some rather preposterous commentary on this about how we have missed out on him, and even how he snubbed Celtic for the Edinburgh club.

Granted, that kind of crazy talk seems to be coming mainly from Hearts fans, who appear to think that getting a 28-year-old from Falkirk is a fitting consolation prize for losing the league title on the last day and losing their captain for free to a domestic rival.

Painting this as some kind of victory over Celtic seems rather pathetic and a little bit like the worst of Ibrox straw-clutching.

But it does beg an interesting question.

What exactly was going on with Calvin Miller this whole time?

It should now be absolutely obvious to everyone that there was no serious interest from Celtic Park. If there had been, we would not be having this conversation. The deal would have been done, and he would be a Celtic player right now, to the bafflement of myself and a number of other people. I genuinely cannot, for the life of me, work out how anyone thought this was a likely outcome.

Miller had a very good season. Nobody should deny that. He led the league in assists and played a major part in Falkirk’s top-six finish. It is good to see him back in the Premiership and good to see him rewarded for finding his best form.

But how anyone could have argued that he was going to make Celtic significantly better, or even just better, does not stand up to examination.

It is good to see him sign for the second-best club in the country. But it is an awful leap from there to the top. The irony is that I once had a lot of hope for Calvin Miller.

Another Celtic site did a piece this morning which reminded us that he made his debut as a left-back and acquitted himself reasonably well. That is not quite my memory of it. He looked uncomfortable and unsure, and the reason he looked uncomfortable and unsure is that Calvin Miller was never a left-back in his life.

For reasons passing understanding, our club had academy figures who tried to convert him into one. He is not the only player they did that to.

Adam Montgomery was another left-sided attacking midfielder they tried to turn into a full-back. Instead of just leaving these guys alone to develop as they were, Celtic tried to reshape them into something else.

Calvin Miller actually had a lot of promise as a left-sided attacker. As he was coming up through the ranks, he made plenty of those “top 50 players to watch in Europe” type lists and was seen as a footballer with genuine potential.

Then we wasted it, trying to turn him into a defender.

It is no surprise that the moment he turned back into a left-sided attacking player, he started producing. When I think of the damage we did to his career with that crazy experiment, it is pretty shocking. So yes, it is good to see him playing in the top flight. It is good to see him playing in his natural role.

I do not think he had any place at Celtic Park now. But once upon a time? Sure. He could have been an Aiden McGeady. A Shaun Maloney. A first-team regular and academy graduate we all spoke about with pride.

Instead, our own club decided to mess with what was working and pretty much made him an afterthought. Crazy. But that is who we are.

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