Craig Gordon has opened up on his Celtic departure after working his way back into the Scotland fold once more.
Gordon departed the club back in the summer of 2020 after failing to agree new terms in Glasgow. His first club Hearts would snap him up where he would shine in both the Championship and then in the Scottish Premiership.
The experienced former Celtic goalkeeper, who spent 6 years with the club and won 12 trophies, has become revitalised at Tynecastle after previously dropping down the Parkhead pecking order.
He’s now part of Steve Clarke’s Scotland squad for upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Moldova and Denmark respectively. And speaking in an interview with the Guardian, Gordon has stated why he felt he had to leave:
“It was a good thing to get away, to go and play. You never know what would have happened if I had stayed, whether I would have played or someone else would have come in and played ahead of me. There are so many unknowns. I don’t bother myself thinking about that.
“I had that motivation at Celtic. I just wasn’t playing. That wasn’t my choice, there wasn’t much I could do about it beyond working as hard as I could. I did everything to make sure my fitness was as good as possible so that whenever I got an opportunity I could prove to people I could still play at the top level.”
Craig Gordon left Celtic a year too early
Gordon had spent the 2019/20 campaign behind Fraser Forster in the pecking order. Therefore, when we all thought Forster was coming back, it looked like no biggie to release Gordon. Especially if he was wanting a lucrative new contract. We had Scott Bain as back-up after all.
In the end we had to settle for Vasilis Barkas coming in as a replacement. But even so, we were all behind the Greek when he first arrived. It still didn’t look as though Gordon was going to be a major miss.
The truth is, in hindsight, we should’ve kept him for another year if possible. Gordon would’ve easily ended up winning his place back in the side given the goalkeeping confusion we had last year. It’s a stretch to say it would’ve secured 10-in-a-row of course. Barkas wasn’t the sole reason we lost the title.
And nobody would swap Hart in order to bring Gordon back. We now have ourselves a top-quality goalkeeper who has experience at the highest level both in England and on the international stage.
Gordon, of course, has a fair chance of adding to his 62 caps. But even so, nothing he does with Hearts will have us believing we should’ve kept him for the long-term.
Things have worked out well and fair play to him. But the success of this football club certainly didn’t hinge on his future.
In other news, Chris Sutton has today absolutely slammed Celtic player who “hasn’t got up to speed”
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
