There has been a lot been said about former St Johnstone midfielder Ali McCann about the potential for the young up and coming star joining Celtic in the summer transfer window.
McCann was linked to the Hoops from various sources and this site alone also wrote about how Mark Guidi and Barry Ferguson both tipped the Northern Ireland international to end up at Paradise, but unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.
Or is it unfortunate?
For all the media spotlight on St Johnstone’s star player last season, was there ever any REAL interest from the Celtic scouting network or even from Ange Postecoglou?
Not to my knowledge.
Maybe it was the fee that the St Johnstone chairman Steve Brown was looking for that made the Hoops hierarchy look elsewhere? Brown went on record as saying, “He’s been consistent over the last two seasons and is going away with Northern Ireland on international duty.
“He’s played against Italy in the last international break and he’s a class act.
“Our transfer record is £1.75million and Ali will not be leaving for any less than that.”
As it turned out, McCann went for £1.25m to Preston North End, and with add on’s the fee may rise closer to the figure that persuaded Brown to let his star man leave for Deepdale.
Again, still no firm interest reported from Celtic Park but the Deepdale Digest seemed to suggest that the English Championship side feared a last minute bid from the Hoops in an attempt to steal McCann.
It never appeared, and the media outlet claimed that Celtic fans took to twitter to show their unhappiness about the clubs ‘failure’ to land the midfield star, “Celtic fans were far from happy, taking to Twitter to suggest that McCann is just another John McGinn – a top Scottish Premiership midfielder who slips through Celtic’s net.”
Where to start?
Apart from the obvious lack of any material bid there is absolutely no similarities to the John McGinn fiasco that played out 2 seasons ago.
And I have never seen any condemnation from any Celtic fans on Twitter to even suggest that there is the slightest bit of unhappiness that a player that wasn’t even wanted by the club “slipped through the net”.
More mischief making in the media, and possibly a bid to use Celtic to get more clicks on its site from this little known media outlet, seems to be at play here.