If Celtic have any hopes of signing Peterborough United forward, Ivan Toney, they will have to break the £9million transfer record that they paid for Odsonne Edouard, according to a report in The Scottish Sun.
The article claims that Peterborough turned down an £8m bid from Brentford in January for Toney and promised the striker that, if they didn’t get promoted to the Championship, they would allow him to leave.
With yesterday’s news that League 1 has been cancelled and with Toney’s side sitting outside the play-off places, it looks as though he will be heading out the door and after Director of Football, Barry Fry, claimed that Celtic would need to find £15m to prise him away earlier in the week, Chairman Darragh MacAnthony has followed this up by confirming that they will entertain offers for him.
“We had multiple clubs try and buy him in January, we promised Ivan if we weren’t in the Championship next season we would sell him.
“We don’t sell our players cheap, the pandemic won’t affect that.
“I can envisage he will probably go to the top two or three Championship clubs if not the bottom ten Premier League clubs.”
Peterborough are looking for silly money for a player that is approaching the final year of his contract and who – despite having a good season with 26 goals to his name – has spent the majority of his career in England’s lower leagues, for Celtic to spend the sort of money Posh are talking about they would be looking at established internationals or players like Edouard who had already proven what they were capable of.
There are plenty of forwards who regularly find the net at one level only to struggle when they step up to the highest stage and Toney, although talented, has far from proven that he has what it takes to lead the line for a club with Champions League aspirations.