Burnley boss Vincent Kompany has addressed the recent speculation surrounding Manchester City’s Celtic-linked centre-back Taylor Harwood-Bellis.
Sky Sports initially reported back in May that Celtic were monitoring young City defender Harwood-Bellis. However, days later the Sun claimed that Burnley were looking to take him down to the Championship.
Kompany already has a previous relationship with the player after taking him on loan for a period at Anderlecht last season. The England under-21 international would then spend the second half of the season at Stoke City and is now pondering his next move.
The Burnley boss has, therefore, been asked about their link with the player and whether it’s something they’re looking to pursue.
As quoted by local outlet Lancs Live, Kompany replied by stating: “Taylor, first of all, is a great lad and player. A leader and someone I have a lot of time for so we will see.”
Harwood-Bellis continues to be highly-rated amongst Man City’s academy, and has already made 8 senior appearances for the first-team [Transfermarkt].
No clear indication as to who Celtic’s next centre-back signing will be
First and foremost, Celtic need a centre-back this summer. It isn’t negotiable. Yes we have 4 options at our disposal, but we’ve already gone into why it’s such a big part of our summer transfer work.
As of yet, there’s no real clear option regarding our primary focus. It hasn’t really been made clear who Ange Postecoglou wants in the door. Yes, we’ve been linked with several centre-backs this summer already, but which of those is the one Ange is really keeping an eye open for?
Harwood-Bellis appears a plausible option. However, talk has gone a touch quieter on that once since the Sky report last month. Our interest doesn’t appear to have progressed beyond the stage of simply monitoring the player.
In addition to that, Celtic supporters would undoubtedly rather see a player come to the club permanently to sort out our centre-back depth issue. Harwood-Bellis doesn’t appear to be a figure City are allowing to let go at the moment. If we did bag a loan move for him, you wouldn’t expect an option-to-buy in the contract.
But time will tell. Evidently from these comments put out by Kompany, it stands to reason that Burnley are hugely interested. After all, if they weren’t, the Belgian would’ve simply shut down the speculation there and then.
We’ll see where this one takes us. But it’s difficult to see Harwood-Bellis being the centre-back we opt to go for at this stage.
In other news, Ben Siegrist’s brilliant quote on Celtic transfers as he prepares for pre-season
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