Celtic lost £400,000 on the Vakoun Bayo saga, The Scottish Sun has reported.
As announced yesterday, the striker has made the switch to Belgium.
The paper says he has joined Gent for a £1.4m. He initially joined the Bhoys for £1.8m in January 2019, from Dunajska Streda.
It’s unclear if Celtic received a loan fee from Toulouse for his services last season. It seems likely at this footballing level that his wages were covered, but little else.
The six-figure loss isn’t huge in the grand scheme of things at Celtic. However, the club do like to make a transfer profit.
In reality, the losses on Bayo could have been a lot worse. If he hadn’t netted his 13 goals for Toulouse last term we could have been struggling to go north of £1m on any sale.
The time wasted on Bayo was also not considerable. The club essentially moved on from him last year when he was allowed to leave on a loan-to-buy basis. We can have chosen to rely on him a lot more only to find out he wasn’t what Celtic required.
He now has a huge opportunity to prove himself in Belgium. There’s every chance he is a hit in the top-flight there given his aerial threat and their belief in him. I’d be happy to see that, regardless of how it worked out in Glasgow.
Hopefully Celtic moving on Bayo is another help to the club in securing incoming signings. From Jeremie Frimpong, to Hatem Abd Elhamed and Jack Hendry, as well as the loan exits, Celtic have actually shed quite a lot of cash from the wage bill, as well as brought in some decent transfer fees in 2021 alone.
It’s time to see that spent on the squad in a meaningful way now.
In other news, the 2020 Ange Postecoglou quotes that fully explain his contentious Celtic call.
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