Celtic have upped the pace in their search for a new keeper with the news that they are in talks with AEK Athens over a potential £3.5million bid for Vasilios Barkas.
The 10-times Greece international has been on the Parkhead recruitment team’s radar for some time and it now looks, according to The Scottish Sun, that he is the man they want to replace Fraser Forster between the sticks.
Scott Bain remains the only recognised senior keeper on the books and it may be that Barkas isn’t the only glovesman to arrive this summer as Neil Lennon looks to make up for the departure of two experienced internationals.
The 26-year old keeper first caught the eye when he faced Brendan Rodgers’s Celtic side in 2018 and has be monitored ever since with The Sun claiming that an attempt had been made to sign him last year, it is believed that AEK are looking for as much as £6-7m with a 20% sell on clause so there remains plenty of negotiating to be done by Nick Hammond before a deal looks likely.
The Hoops gaffer will have been wanting to focus this summer on adding one or two players of quality to fine tune his squad, however, he appears to have spent most of it trying to solve what could fast become a problem should Bain get injured in the near future.
Despite the gulf in quality in the respective squads, the defeat to PSG will have been beneficial to Lennon in that it highlighted that he needs extra bodies, particularly in defence, if he is to maintain the incredible levels of consistency that has seen his side become one of the most dominant in Scottish football history.