A reasonably credible French outlet today reported that Celtic has made a loan offer with an option to buy for Lorient striker Mohamed Bamba…
Sport.fr report: ‘Having lost his form at Lorient, Mohamed Bamba could revive his career in Scotland. Celtic Glasgow have submitted a loan offer with an option to buy for the Ivorian striker, who is under contract with Les Merlus until 2028.
‘After a promising start to 2024, the player has only managed one Ligue 1 goal this season. Now second in the pecking order for the attack, his playing time has dwindled. Lorient are considering the offer from Glasgow for this coming winter.’
Celtic have been operating without a recognised striker for most of this season, relying on rookie hopeful Johnny Kenny and project club signing Shin Yamada with free agent signing Kelechi Iheanacho playing an occasional part when fit after signing the day after the summer transfer window closed with Michael Nicholson drawing a blank in hie endeavours to replace former talisman Kyogo who left the club at the end of January 2025.
The 24 year-old Ivory Coast striker looks likely to be Celtic’s second attempt at replacing Kyogo having had an approach for Birmingham striker Furuhashi turned down by the Championship side managed by the former assistant manager at Celtic, Chris Davies.
Bamba has scored one goal this season (against Monaco) while Furuhashi has managed to score twice. Johnny Kenny, meanwhile has found the back of the net on six occasions in this campaign.
Bamba started out at Bouake in his homeland before moving to Hapeol Rishon LeZion in Israel where he finished as the top scorer of Israel’s second tier in 2022-23 with 20 goals. That earned him a move to Wolfsberger in Austria in the summer of 2023 he scored six goals in 15 appearances, which caught the attention of Lorient.
The player has been sidelined recently due to disciplinary issues at Lorient but was back at the weekend coming off the bench with a quarter of an hour remaining, again against Monaco but this time he didn’t score.
Lorient signed Bamba in January 2024 for a fee of around €5million on a four-and-a-half year deal. Presumably they will be looking to recoup as much of that fee as possible while Michael Nicholson will probably be looking at some lowballing.
A lesson from the Adam Idah loan signing for Celtic should be to get the transfer fee tied down at this stage. If the player arrives but fails to impress then he goes back to France. If he is successful and the club wants to sign him in the summer then they’ll know the price.
In the case of Adam Idah, Celtic failure to do that with Norwich City, meant that the £3m transfer valuation in February 2024 more than tripled due to Idah’s exploits while on loan at Celtic, which included scoring crucial goals in a tight title battle against theRangers and also the winner in the Scottish Cup Final against the latest Ibrox club.
And having to overpay for the Ireland striker probably went a long way to ultimately his failing to make a longer stay at the club, with Michael Nicholson selling him off to Swansea City late in the summer window, making it two strikers sold and not replaced in the previous two windows by the ‘world class in everything we do’ Celtic CEO.
We seem determined to focus on the cheapest available short term sticking plaster solutions. It’s pathetic and embarrassing. Hardly planning for a title, or for CL football.
We should be be buying the best available quality, right now.
The Croatian striker Kovacevic went for just around £3m give or take, and he was scoring for fun. And we’re targeting a guy who can’t score. I know they play in different leagues but seriously go figure. Why do we consistently target and sign players who cannot do a job for us. Decades of underwhelming signings. For every Kyogo or Maeda there are 2 or 3 Guidettis, Boerrigters and Balikwishas.
Ever considered for a moment that Kovacevic and other currently prolific strikers bandied about in the media didn’t want to come to Scotland? That’s NOT defnding the board by the way. In the case of Kovacevic evidently he wasn’t intersted or MON wasn’t, or there are others pending.
I did consider it. I made the same point in a different post.
For a Croat you have Budapest v Glasgow. Still with CL prospects. Being closer to home etc.
But it’s still not an excuse not to have made serious moves for “a goalscorer”. Kovacevic was an illustration. A very affordable one.