The pre-season is now officially upon us and not surprisingly due to what’s going on in the world teams are shedding players from their squads across Scotland at a rate of knots.
That would usually be the case to an extent up here in any case what with so many signed on short term contracts these days but it really is quite startling just how many out of contract players have been allowed to depart without being offered new terms from the moment the calendar hit June 1st.
As for Celtic, the club has pretty succinctly bid farewell to first-team squad players Jonny Hayes and Jozo Simunovic with fringe player Calvin Miller also exiting.
All three players were out of contract and under normal circumstances, Hayes and Jozo may have been offered season-long extensions but in these precarious times, it would appear there is no room for sentiment or a bloated squad.
After impressing at Aberdeen where he was their star player Jonny completed a dream £1.3 million move to Celtic in the summer of 2017 and went on to make a very respectable 68 appearances for the club over three seasons, some of which was impacted by injury, and scored two goals.
Mostly fitting in as a utility player on the left side he offered cover for the left-back position and from the subs bench, he was often deployed in a more attacking role.
The highlight of his time at the club was undoubtedly him scoring the second goal in injury time to secure a resounding 2-0 win over a fancied Rangers side at Ibrox on a sunny day on the 1st of September 2019.
A bit of a marmite player amongst the Celtic support no one can ever deny the fact Jonny gave 100% for the jersey and was happy to play in any position where cover was required.
Personally, I’ll never forget the tireless shift he put in during our memorable 2-1 win over Lazio at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico last year.
Soon to turn 33 it would be no surprise to see him turn out for a top-six Scottish Premiership or English Championship side next season.
Now we move onto Jozo Simunovic, the Croatian under-21 internationalist who was the biggest signing of the Ronny Deila era after being brought in for a significant fee from Dinamo Zagreb in the wake of Virgil Van Djik’s transfer to Southampton in September 2015.
Big Jozo cost anywhere from £3.5 to £6.75 million depending on what source you read which was a considerable chunk of the initial £13 million Celtic received for Dutch internationalist Van Djik though Celtic ultimately received far more than that for the Dutchman over the years due to various contractual add-ons.
Either way, he wasn’t cheap and much was expected though sadly injury blighted much of his initial time at the club.
He nearly departed for Torino in the summer of 2016 as Brendan Rodgers was beginning his Celtic revolution but the move fell through at the last minute and it was credit to the big Croat for how he reacted throughout.
Sitting outside a sun-kissed cafe, in Turn, awaiting news on developments a Sky Sports News reporter had tracked him down and was determined for him to say something that might be a slight to the club he was on the verge of departing but big Jozo apparently well aware of the politics of football just smiled and stated he had no ill-feeling towards Celtic and was fine with returning to fight for his place should the proposed move to Torino his agent was trying to barter fall through.
In the end, it did and he spent the next four years with the men in hoops.
Often blighted by injuries and with first-team appearances at a premium due to the likes of Boyata, Ajer and laterally recent signing Christopher Jullien being preferred ahead of him he, unfortunately, committed a few defensive howlers when he did get opportunities such as in big European games against Anderlecht and Copenhagen at Celtic Park – the second of which effectively eliminated us from the Europea League knockout phase back in February – and he was sent off at Ibrox against Rangers though we recovered to beat the light blues 3-2 in any case.
Still only 25 it’s safe to say he’ll get plenty of opportunities on the continent and though he failed to live up to his large transfer fee he leaves with two great individual memories the first being scoring the goal to beat Kilmarnock in April of last year that paid tribute perfectly to the recently departed club legend Billy McNeill and then that unforgettable crunching tackle on Kenny Miller that sent the Rangers captain into orbit during Celtic’s resounding 5-1 thumping of the light blues on their own patch back on the 29th of April 2017.
He leaves the club having made 129 appearances and scored five times.
Incredibly he also departs with eleven winners medals to go with the five he’d previously claimed at first club Zagreb. Not a bad haul for a guy still two months away from his 26th birthday.
As for Calvin Miller alas there isn’t much to tell and the 22-year-old probably now regrets not taking up an offer to move to Kilmarnock permanently last summer.
Instead, he decided to see out the final year of his contract at Celtic where he spent most of his time on the sidelines injured.
In total, he made five first-team appearances for Celtic.
Now onto when the game will return and it looks like it’ll be early August and barring some incredible turnaround in the coming two months, it’s pretty certain to be behind closed doors until possibly the end of the year.
Season tickets are on sale and the proposal is you can use them to watch all home games on Sky Sports with the specific details still to be ironed out.
I presumed the club would simply give all season ticket holders the right to have exclusive access to view all home games via Celtic TV like they do for foreign subscribers but it appears the deal has been done with Sky to provide coverage instead.
Rather than vainly attempt to describe how this would be possible, I’ll wait for more info to be forthcoming in greater detail from both the club and broadcaster.
With two months left before the season is proposed to begin, they have plenty of time to iron out the kinks.
Of course, English football is scheduled to return behind closed doors in two weeks time so rather like with the somewhat disastrous introduction of VAR to the top flight game down south last season, Scottish football can use the EPL and lower leagues as a Guinea Pig for what works and what doesn’t.
Things such as carboard cutouts of fans and piping in artificial fan reactions to the stadium have been proposed and could be farcical or may actually elevate it above the glorified training ground games it otherwise will inevitably be.
As Jock Stein said: “Football without fans is nothing.”
I have a feeling big Jock will be proven to be very right on that count in the coming months.
....Always A Tim! 