Having had his fingered burnt by the decision, taken by then Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers, not to sell Dedryck Boyata to Fulham in the 2018 summer transfer window, Peter Lawwell is unlikely to fall into the same trap anytime soon.
The reason that £12million was allowed to slip away was the significant tension that had developed between the Celtic CEO and the current manager of Leicester City. These days Lawwell and his managerial team all apparently see eye-to-eye and any differences of opinion will be minor in comparison to all of those shenanigans.
Boyata ended up seeing out his contract and then headed to Hertha Berlin, where he is now club captain, on a free transfer. That was a real financial sore one for Celtic to take.
When all that was going on Ryan Christie was very much on the fringe of things at Celtic under Brendan Rodgers. He had been loaned out to Aberdeen for two spells and did very well for Derek McInnes but the truth is that the £500,000 signing from Inverness Caley Thistle was way down the pecking order alongside Scott Allan as Ronny Delia signings that Brendan Rodgers didn’t really fancy.
That incidentally remains the case to this day with the rumours that Rodgers was interested in signing Christie in the summer window apparently being without any substance. The Leicester City boss was apparently interested in Odsonne Edouard – who he rates highly – but not Christie who he apparently doesn’t consider to be at the level he’s looking for at Leicester. So we heard anyway.
Christie last week dropped out of contention for the Glasgow Derby alongside former Celtic Star Kieran Tierney after another ex-Celt, Stuart Armstrong tested positive for COVID-19. The three had being playing on computer game apparently and that would have given the chance to talk about life at different ends of the English Premier League.
Armstrong for instance left Celtic (for around £6million) where his basic wage was around £15k a week to join Southampton where he’s on £50k per week. Tierney after a £25million transfer from Celtic to Arsenal will be on even more. It seems that Ryan Christie fancies a bit of that financial action for himself, which is fair enough.
What he can’t expect though is for Celtic to allow him to “do a Boyata” and that’s something that Peter Lawwell will be determined to avoid. Once bitten and all that.
