Celtic have been offered Stoke City’s one time record signing Giannelli Imbula. The midfielder is currently without a club as a move to Russia last season with Russian Premier League club Sochi was cut short by the COVID pandemic.
Imbula has amassed career transfer fees of over £45m. He started his professional career at Guingamp where he made 91 appearances before sealing a £5m move to Marseille. He failed to make an impact in his maiden season but when coach, Marcelo Bielsa, took over the French side, Imbula formed a great midfield three with Andre Pierre Gignac and Dimitri Payet and Marseille finished 4th in Ligue 1 that season.
Off the back of that season, Imbula earned an £18m club record move to Porto in 2015 but the defensive midfielder struggled to settle and the Portuguese club were willing to offload him the following summer.
However, in February 2016, Imbula made the switch to the English Premier League were Mark Hughes paid Stoke’s record transfer fee of £18.6m to land the international midfielder but he only managed 26 appearances and couldn’t adapt to the English game.
The player then spent spells on loan at Toulouse, Rayo Vallecano and Lecce before moving on to his ill fated spell at Sochi. Imbula has been on trial at French club Nantes where manager, Raymond Domenech said, “He was ok but we can’t exaggerate. What we saw of him didn’t encourage us to take him. We didn’t have room for him anyway and in our situation (fourth bottom in Ligue 1) we are looking for personalities to help us stay up. He is too quiet.”