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Why Moi Elyounoussi’s time at Celtic is almost certainly over

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IT looks like Moi Elyounoussi’s time at Celtic is over and the Norwegian forward will head back to Southampton after an anti-climatical end to his season in Paradise.

The player has certainly enjoyed the experience of playing for Celtic and while earlier noises sounded positive that he’d like to stay and that Peter Lawwell might be able to do a double deal with the Saints for Elyounoussi and the higher priority Fraser Forster, that appears to have been set aside as a consequence of the new financial reality that the game will face post coronavirus.

David Friel, writing in Scottish Sun today, gives some insight into how Moi is looking at where his career goes from here and the focus is on the Premier League and Southampton and no longer on trying to make his move to Paradise permanent.

“I still have three years left of the contract with Southampton,” Moi explained. “I want to show a better side of myself than what I have done.

“I hope I can go back and fight for a place next season,” Elyounoussi said.

“But at the same time, I really want to finish the season at Celtic and win the league.”

Injuries hammered his season before the pandemic brought it to a premature close and both have caused the Norwegian frustration.  “I’ve had injuries but it’s been a very nice time in Celtic, especially after how things were going in Southampton. It’s a very strange situation.

“The plan was a holiday in late May, before I meet for pre-season with Southampton. But now I don’t quite know what will happen.”

The other way to look at this situation is that Southampton may well be keen to rid themselves of the fridge players who are not in their immediate plans for next season, given their own financial landscape changing – no club big or small will be able to return to an ‘as you were’ situation. Football has changed permanently.

Over the weekend there have been two news stories that both claim that Celtic have made lowball bids for Paddy Roberts from Manchester City and Brandon Soppy from Rennes. Note that the stories bot talked about bids, not just interest. Celtic could be engaged in early activity to sign players who are not likely to feature as core players at the clubs involved – and Roberts, Soppy and Elyounoussi would all fall into the category.

However player contracts post coronavirus are going to be more modest – to say the least – so Moi is more than likely to see out his time at Southampton on his big pre-corona virus Premier League contract. which has three more years to run.

And that’s probably the decisive factor in all of this and why we’ve probably seen the last of Moi Elyounoussi in a Celtic shirt.

Naill J posted an interesting article on Celtic transfer strategy this summer, and listed numerous targets that could make sense while strengthening the squad and maximising the value from the modest sums we are likely to have available to spend on players.  You can read Niall’s  article below.

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