Celtic’s Transfer Mistakes: Selling These Two Players Was A Blunder In Recent Times

Celtic Should Surely Have Not Let These Players Leave

The way things have gone in Scotland recently, mean that balancing the books and not denying players a step up to a better level are the priorities, rather than buying top quality talent and being a major force in Europe.

Sometimes, selling players from this division, even for a club like Celtic, is unavoidable and it is a guarantee that Moussa Dembele won’t be a part of Scottish Premiership next season. Likewise, the sales of Virgil van Dijk, Victor Wanyama and Fraser Forster were necessary for the players in terms of their development.

Here are two players who should not have been allowed to leave.

Stuart Findlay

The 20-year-old defender was allowed to join Newcastle United last summer. Newcastle are at a good level and have one of the best coaches in the world. The fact they wanted Findlay should have been a massive warning sign to Celtic regarding his true potential.

Findlay, signed mainly for the Toons’ development team, went on to make a quick first team debut against Birmingham in the FA Cup at St James’ Park and was buzzing afterwards following what he called Rafa’s ‘approving handshake’. He definitely has a future at Newcastle.

This sort of quality is not easy to come by, so when such a player was already in the squad, why let him go? In assumption, it is easy to see how Findlay would have stepped in as a replacement right now for Sviatchenko and not let anyone down. Signing ageing defenders with fitness worries for that purpose, instead of holding on to a young talent was probably not the right way to go.

Darnell Fisher

Not a name you might have expected, but there is a method behind this madness. Fisher was another player who was allowed to leave last summer when he signed for Rotherham. Rotherham hardly sounds glamorous, especially when Celtic have a 60,000 capacity stadium and are contenders for Champions League spot.

However, apart from a handful of games on the big stage, Celtic’s bread and butter is the Scottish Premiership and games at that level are very much below the ones that Fisher is playing every week in England. Playing at right-back for struggling team in a tough Championship year, Fisher has been Rotherham’s best defender with a club high 2.8 tackles per game.

Mikael Lustig is 30-years old now and is not the strongest part of Celtic. Far from being a reasonable understudy to Lustig, Fisher may have even been good enough to be in the starting XI for Celtic. The Scottish side will have to replace Lustig at some point and there is no guarantee that they will find a better player than Darnell Fisher.