Not everyone will remember but during a transitional period at Celtic when Gordon Strachan first took over the reigns back in 2005, there was a lot of upheaval.
Martin O’Neill’s side was getting broken up, they were a spent force for the most part and rebuilding had to be done.
One of Strachan’s first signings was to bring a young star in from Arsenal called Jeremie Alliadiere on-loan for a season.
There was a lot of noise around this particular deal with the Arsenal striker coming with the reputation of being a hot prospect who still might become a Gunners first team star in the future.
However, it all went south very quickly, the player spent two months on-loan at the club, taking in pre-season and making just two substitute appearances for Celtic before the club and the player decided to part ways.
Speaking about the failed Celtic move to TalkSport, the Frenchman was very candid and spoke highly of Celtic even though things went bad.
“The previous season I got injured badly on my knee so it was a mutual decision with Arsene Wenger that it would be good for me to go on loan.
“Celtic came up and for me I thought ‘Wow, what an opportunity to go to such a big club’.
“So I signed for a year and started pre-season, everything was going well. I was working hard and trying to do as best as I could for the club.
“Suddenly the club bought another striker, Zurawski, Polish striker, and from that day when he arrived I became a sub.
“I was on the bench, but I thought ‘I’m here for a year and I’m going to fight and try to do my best and get in the starting XI’.
And then just before the transfer window ended, the manager Gordon Strachan just came in and said to me, ‘We’ve bought this player and because he’s part of the club and you’re only on loan he will get more of an opportunity than you’.
“He said ‘If you’re not happy with that then you can move’. The point was for me to get chances to play because I was on the bench at Arsenal so going to Celtic to be on the bench as well didn’t really make sense to me.
“Because I had a week left, I straight away called my agent and said this is the situation and we managed to move to West Ham on loan again for another season.”
