‘We’d stumble at £4million’ – Former Club Scout Lifts the Lid on Celtic’s Transfer Process

FORMER CELTIC Scout David Moss has lifted the lid on what exactly will be going on at Celtic Park this month as the club look to recruit new faces.

Moss also pointed out the difficulties of procuring players on the strict criteria and financial restrictions.

The scout who now works for Huddersfield Town admitted there was much more leeway with finances down south – like we didn’t already know that!

“Celtic ran an amazing business, but we’d stumble as soon as the fees rose to £4million, or the player wanted £2,000 extra a week. There is more leeway down here even at a newly promoted team.

“The most we could pay would be around £3m, and we had two criteria: did the player have the ability and character to compete against the likes of Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, AC Milan? And did they have the potential to be sold at a huge profit?

He spoke of handing over to Peter Lawwell and Brendan Rodgers after targets had been identified and it was getting down to the finances.

“Further down the road we could come together again and update, and then hand over to the chief executive, Peter Lawwell, and Michael Nicholson – the company secretary – to deal with the financials with the player’s agent once we had permission from his club.

“Say we were looking for a box-to-box midfielder, we’d deliver 15 different options and Brendan Rodgers, very professional, would make notes on each player.

“We’d go into each one, their strong points, and whittle it down to an absolute maximum of four to focus on. Brendan would say which ones he preferred, and we’d get the go-ahead to explore how much it would cost us, either with the agent or the club.