Oliver Burke’s arrival at Parkhead was met with a little bit of scepticism as Celtic didn’t exactly need a winger. Also, let us not forget that the Scotsman had played less than an hour of football in the first half of the season with West Bromwich Albion. However, Burke has settled in well at the club, and it feels like he has been a Celtic player for quite some time.
The Baggies had paid a massive £15m transfer fee to acquire Burke’s services from RB Leipzig. But the highest paid Scottish footballer (in terms of transfer fee) had failed to find his footing with the English club.
West Brom meanwhile have sacked their manager Darren Moore after a string of poor results, and maybe there could be an opportunity for Celtic to get their man on a permanent basis in the summer if the new manager coming in doesn’t rate Burke much.
It was always going to be an outside chance for Celtic to sign the 22-year-old as Moore rated him and wanted him back at the Hawthorns. He had said (Express And Star), ”He’s a tremendous player, he just needs the volume of games. If he gets that we’ll see a great player for West Brom. I’m developing Oli because of the output we’ve laid on him. We’ll get him back in the summer and have a player who’s nearer the front line than just playing bit-parts.”
It’s clear that with Moore at the helm of the club, the Hoops wouldn’t have had much of an opportunity to sign the Scotsman. But now Moore’s sacking might present Celtic with a window of opportunity. However, one thing is clear that the Baggies won’t sell him for cheap and they would definitely want to recover as much money as possible for the £15m they paid for him.
So Celtic might still have to break their all-time transfer record to sign him. On the pieces of evidence on how Burke has settled in, we think he would be a good bit of business for the Hoops even if they land him for say £12m. His pace, physicality and work rate are impressive and the fact that he is just 21 makes him all the more worthy of that kind of price tag.
With a new manager coming in at the Hawthorn, he might want to make a few changes and sign some players in the transfer market. To achieve that, he might want to generate the funds by selling some of his players. Burke could be on that list given that the 21-year-old hasn’t made many contributions at the club.
Therefore we definitely think that sacking of Moore is a positive outcome for Celtic and that presents them with an improved opportunity of signing this star loanee permanently.
