Scott Allan has revealed that Brendan Rodgers offered Scott Allan game time in the summer of 2018 to keep him at Celtic Park only to regale on that promise.
After John McGinn’s move to Celtic from Hibs broke down, the relationship between Brendan Rodgers and the Board appeared to breakdown too. Allan, speaking as a guest on Open Goal’s Keeping the Ball on the Ground podcast, said that he tried to keep himself fit as he knew he wasn’t going to play despite Rodgers saying he would.
“Brendan Rodgers had said at the start of the season you’ll be part of the squad this year and then the first game of the season came against Livingston and I wasn’t involved.
“Very quickly after that I knew I wasn’t going to play. It was just one of those things.
“I actually started going to the gym more, I became obsessed with going to the gym and doing spin classes at night.
“I hardly missed a training session the whole of last season, but didn’t play any games.”
The emergence of Ryan Christie is probably a big factor that Allan didn’t play last season as he battled Tom Rogic for that ‘No. 10’ jersey, meaning there was no space for Allan.
Allan also discussed how Peter Lawwell blocked his proposed move to Hibs last January because he felt that he had done the Edinburgh cub too many favours in the past. Lawwell would’ve been even more unwilling to deal with Hibs following the McGinn saga the summer before.
“I got myself to Christmas, I thought I’d manage to get myself to Hibs in January with Lenny, but then I didn’t go.
“Why? Peter said I couldn’t go to Hibs. They always said they had done too many favours for Hibs in the past, so that was off the table.
“I thought that would have got pushed through. And then the second part of the season it was doing extra sessions at night that kept me going.
Regardless of Lawwell’s decision to block the deal, Allan signed a pre-contract with Neil Lennon’s Hibs. Less than a month later, Lennon had left Hibs and at the end of February, was back at Celtic Park as manager.
Allan revealed one of his biggest regrets from his time at Celtic and it was a decision that he made himself by deciding to go to Rotherham with Alan Stubbs.
“I remember Brendan coming out and saying I had trained really well in the press. He never said I wasn’t training well enough or I wasn’t good enough.
“We had good players who had done good jobs for Celtic over those three seasons. I just put it down to that. I had already dealt with it in my head that I wasn’t going to be there.
“When I went to Rotherham, I think I should have stayed and I might have got a chance that year. But I was just wanting to play football.”
Allan was signed by Ronny Deila from Hibs in 2015 but only made 17 appearances for Celtic in his time at the club.
