Former Celtic youth player makes debut for Aston Villa at 17

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Former Celtic academy player, Aidan Borland, made his first-team debut for Aston Villa in the Carabao Cup last night.

Borland left Celtic for Aston Villa in August last year to make the switch to the English Premier League club as he followed the path of Ben Doak who joined Liverpool two years earlier to join Villa’s academy.

The 17-year-old has made five appearances for the Villa youth team which includes captaining the full 90-minutes against Young Boys in the UEFA Youth League and playing against the likes of Arsenal, Blackburn, Leeds United and Derby County in the Premier League 2.

And according to Aston Villa’s match report, Borland was rewarded with a place in the Carabao Cup matchday squad for his ‘strong performances‘ for the youth team.

Aidan Borland enjoys cameo Villa debut

Coming on as a 62nd-minute substitute, Borland got just under half an hour to show the Villa fans what he can do and the Celtic support what they could be missing in the 2-1 cup win.

In the 28 minutes he was on the pitch, the former Celtic youngster was rated 6.0 by Fotmob. Borland made good use of his 27 touches as he 22 passes with a 95% accuracy.

Borland also made one pass into Wycombe’s final third and had a 100% long ball passing accuracy. Defensively, the Scotland U17 midfielder contributed with one clearance, one defensive action and one ball recovery.

However, the youngster lost both of his duels as he failed to win each of the ground and ariel challenges he engaged in.

Borland joined a list of departed Celtic youngsters

Celtic fans have gotten a bit used to watching some of the club’s most talented youngsters leave the club to develop themselves in England or beyond.

Josh Adam and Vincent Angelini both left the club for Man City in 2020 and Watford in 2021 respectively as well as watching young Liam Morrison and Barry Hepburn leave for Bayern Munich.

More recently, Celtic have also lost Rocco Vata to Watford and yound Daniel Kelly to Millwall.

In many ways the youngsters cannot be blamed when the likes of Man City and Bayern Munich come calling.

Getting to play and learn from some of the world’s best players would appeal to any young football player.

However, Celtic must do better to retain these talented youth players and get them to progress to the first team and, hopefully, Player Pathway Manager Darren O’Dea can now do that in the near future.