Mikey Johnston is reportedly having a medical in London today as the Republic of Ireland winger edges closer to a move to English Championship side Burnley…
News emerged yesterday of Burnley’s interest in the Celtic Academy graduate who was a huge success at West Brom during his loan spell last season. While Johnston was a huge hit with the WBA supporters the club has financial issues and have not been able to fund a move to bring him back to the Hawthorns.
Money isn’t a problem for Burnley who will have their parachute payments after dropping out of the Premier League. And the Turf Moor side has recently sold Wilson Odobert to Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham.
Brendan Rodgers was asked about Mikey Johnston situation this season ahead of the match at Celtic Park against Hibs last weekend. The Celtic manager hinted that a move was in the offing.
“I’m open at the moment in terms of where things are at, I gave Mikey his debut when he was 18 and played him. So we’ve got a good relationship and we talk openly,” Brendan noted.
“I think he’s at the stage where he’ll probably want to play more. But he’s worked hard over pre-season and put himself in a really good position. There are some clubs that have shown interest in him, but we’ll see what happens over the next couple of weeks.”
It’s unlikely that Mikey will force his way into the wide positions at Celtic unless there were several injuries at the same time. That being the case, and as an established international at the age of 25, he is going to want to play. The English Championship seemed to suit him and Burnley will be a team on the front foot, looking at bouncing back into the Premier League.
If Mikey can deliver the goods the way he did at West Brom then he could play a crucial role in delivering promotion for The Clarets, and in doing so earning himself a crack at the Premier League next season.
Celtic should also achieve a decent transfer fee from this deal, adding to the support’s demands for a busy end to the transfer window in terms of incomings.
Best of luck to Mikey, he’s probably going to go on and show himself to be a top quality player. For some reason it just never properly clicked into top gear at Celtic.
In other news Celtic yesterday offloaded Yuki Kobayashi to Portuguese side Portomonense. While Ange Postecoglou’s signings usually hit the mark for Celtic, it’s fair to say that the Japanese defender struggled to cope with the physical nature of Scottish football. Can’t win them all, not even Ange!
Celtic winger, Mikey Johnston, is expected to undergo a medical in London this morning ahead of a move to EFL Championship side, Burnley.
The 25 year-old Republic of Ireland international will replace Wilson Odobert who recently left the The Clarets to join Tottenham. pic.twitter.com/gDWWYl4i20
— Andrew Miller (@AndrewMillerNBA) August 22, 2024
I watched some of his games at West Brom, he done well in a far better league than ours. I thought a club would come in for him, wish him well.
After hearing every manager since Lennys first time saying we have far too big a squad and we need to cut it down, at last it looks like Brendan is trying to do exactly that. This lowers the wage bill and hopefully will help to bring some quality in.
The English championship is possibly the right level of football for Mikey to be playing at imo?
With more regular game time, he might develop the consistency and end product that has been missing from his time with ourselves sadly?
Has never really found that end product with ourselves, that the talent within him possess, and possibly deserves more than just staying with ourselves, in order to just making up numbers for our homegrown quota requirements, at this stage of his career imo?
However, it still leaves ourselves having to find a replacement in that regards all the same?
Currently finding it quite strange that at this stage of the window, we are finding ourselves potentially looking at 3 more Scottish players, just to fulfill our 8 homegrown quota requirements?
Surely Rodgers has some sort of plan in operation, to solving the current situation within our 25man squad?
Yet haven’t a clue how Rodgers actually intends to solve the situation either?
Apart from McGowan, where you could see where a potential position may be for himself within our squad at present?
Still no idea as to who and where another 2 Scottish players are going to fit into our finalised squad at present?