Matt O’Riley leaving is inevitable, Celtic recruitment plans need to be ambitious

It’s no surprise to learn that Matt O’Riley is attracting attention from clubs down south and further afield around Europe as he’s such a talented player.

Fresh on from winning the young player and senior player of the year accolades at Sunday night’s Celtic Player of the Year awards in the Hydro, it’s been reported that Matt is being heavily pursued by two top six EPL sides, as well as Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid.

An £18m bid was knocked back from Atletico back in January and the La Liga side still remain keen on the midfielder’s signature this coming summer.

But Diego Simone’s side like every other interested party will have to stump up a hefty sum to secure the Denmark international’s signature.

We are talking in the £25-£30 million bracket, nothing less will suffice if Matt is to leave Celtic Park. The club after all hold all the aces as Matt just recently signed a contract extension, so if they accepted anything less it would be sheer incompetence. That’s not going to happen though as Celtic may well reach a £30m transfer fee for the first time.

When Matt inevitably does leave the club, any fee must be used to heavily invest in a player or a similar quality. If that’s going to cost us between £8 -£12 million then so be it.

No ‘bargain buys’ or ‘project’ players are going to cut it. We have the means and it’s time we used them if we want to be successful. We’ve got to replace like with like.

And the board owe it to Brendan Rodgers to back him in the transfer market this summer after he patently worked with their project signing signing from last summer but not a single one made the grade for an involvement at the weekend against theRangers.