It was six years ago when a very young Jason Denayer walked through the door at Celtic on a year-long loan from Manchester City.
The Belgian defender wasn’t very well known but coming through the Manchester academy, Celtic jumped at the chance to bring him in under Ronny Deila.
Jason spent one season at Celtic park but helped make his mark alongside defensive partner Virgil van Dijk who was at the club at the time too.
Reminiscing about his time at the club and how it came about, Denayer spoke about how the deal came to be and it was Patrick Vieira who encouraged him to move north of the border.
“I was at Manchester City and during the summer of 2014 and Patrick Vieira came to my house.” Denayer told SunSport.
“He said to me, ‘Look, the Celtic coach has called me’. He had already watched me in reserve games.
“Patrick said, ‘He is interested in you and you have to go to Celtic – it will be a great experience’.
“For me, it was a big thing to make the transition between the young teams and first team.
“I didn’t think twice about it and I went to Celtic.
“It was more difficult to adapt than I thought, because I did not speak English very well.
“There were no French speakers so I had to work a lot on communication.
“But in terms of football, I settled very quickly after scoring in my first game.
“I had a fantastic season at Celtic. We won trophies and it was great for me.”
Denayer made 44 appearances for the club scoring six goals and helping the bhoys to a double.
The defender now plays in the same team as another former Celt, Moussa Dembele at Lyon. Tranfermarkt currently value Jason at £13.5m with Lyon signing him for just over £5m Virgil cost a little bit more for Liverpool.
