Let’s not kid ourselves, whenever Celtic sign a player from the EPL, we immediately get our hopes up.
Perhaps that’s just the successful work of the Premier League’s advertising. It pushes itself as the best league in world football. Whilst we all laugh at that idea from time to time, we can certainly be guilty of falling for it.
That was proven this season with the arrivals of Shane Duffy and Jonjoe Kenny from Brighton and Everton respectively. Duffy in particular saw a huge tidal wave of approval and admiration come his way when he signed on loan from Brighton. We know what happened there.
As it turned out, Shane simply couldn’t cope with the intensity and demands of being a Celtic player. He didn’t show anywhere near the quality needed to even compete at Celtic, and very quickly he became one of our biggest failures of the season.
But in January we were sucked in again. Celtic signed Jonjoe Kenny on loan from Everton. Granted, the fans weren’t overly fooled with this one and would take some convincing. However, once again it was an example of the club seeing a Premier League player available on loan and snatching at the deal.
What we got in Kenny was a statue of a player. A full-back who didn’t have the pace, footwork, or technical ability to be anywhere near this football club. He would seldom bomb up and get beyond the opposition full-back – a huge part of how Celtic play.
Celtic have been left fooled by the EPL market this season
Defensively he wasn’t up to much either. He was often caught out with at times a lack of both awareness and physicality proving an issue in one-v-one defending. He’ll now leave the club and there’ll be absolutely no demands for him to return. We’re talking about a player who Everton reportedly believe to be worth £10m [Daily Mirror].
Moi Elyounoussi from Southampton was a much bigger success. However, for a £16m player [The Scotsman], even he had big consistency issues this season. You won’t find every Celtic fan wanting him back next year either, with too many performances from him this term being below par.
The Norwegian hasn’t been a failure by any stretch. However, his price tag shows just how over-inflated the EPL market is. Duffy reportedly cost £2million for Celtic just to sign him on loan. That’s not even including the meaty wages we would’ve been paying [Sky Sports].
Celtic have, this season, been caught out by the market down south. We’ve been tricked into thinking Premier League talents are much better than they are.
Meanwhile, we’ve watched the likes of Mark McKenzie, Alberth Elis, and Brenden Aaronson escape our clutches from the MLS and better themselves. We’ve failed to adequately source from talent hotspots such as Scandinavia, the USA, and the Balkans.
These are all places Celtic should be scouring instead of being fooled into thinking the best players in football are all in the EPL. It’s led to us making two failed signings this year and a third that hasn’t made the impact necessary.
With our fingers crossed, we pray this isn’t a mistake we make again.
In other news, Celtic should look to snap up their first summer signing quickly after today’s announcement.
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