Doubt he was on great money in League One?
At Celtic? I’d say around 8-10k pw if I was guessing.
Boro ousted us for McGree by giving him 14k pw.
Ah he could have been. There’s lads in the conference on 4k pw.
League One clubs are really struggling for cash at the moment, Covid has hit them badly. Also, he’s young, this is breakthrough season really, probably wouldn’t have had huge negotiating power until now.
I’d say he was on no more than a couple of grand a week.
Maybe some semblance of sanity is returning.
He said in his interview yesterday that Ange’s discussion with him was the key factor in his signing. He was impressed with the vision/philosophy and all that shite. Likes the idea of playing in an attacking team with a big stadium and support. There seemed to be a handful of English championship clubs in for him - WBA, Blackburn, Swansea to name a few. I don’t think Celtic fans are under any illusions these days that, if he’s as promising as reported and does as well as hoped, he’ll be off to the EPL in a couple of years.
Young, English, long term contract.
Cha-ching.
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Exactly.
We got him at a good price because of a release clause and I wouldn’t be naive enough to think his reps didn’t insist on one in his Celtic deal too. But if we get 2-3 years of quality displays out of him then it’s okay if it’s set at something not outlandish. Say £7.5mn after a set amount of first team appearances or something. Say 100 appearances. On our side, we’ve probably looked for a sell on clause in return.
#Finance
I think we should be looking for a £20m minimum clause.
He’s at a decent level now, European football, big club, fighting for titles. It would be silly if we gave him a miniscule release clause like that. EPL clubs regularly pay £20m fees for Championship footballers.
It’s chicken & egg though. He might not have signed at all without an EPL release clause so you can play hardball but risk not getting him. You might need to set it lower to get him but then put in things to ensure you get benefit from him before it’s triggered (like only kicking in after a certain amount of time/appearances etc or it rises over time or if he hits certain milestones). It’s all theorising in any case.
Fuck him if he doesn’t want to sign.
We’d be far better of offering him 15k pw and no release clause than 8k pw with a minimum release clause.
It would be idiotic to include a low release clause when we know well he has the profile to go for big money.
Doubling us his wages would cost us around 2m over his contract.
Losing him for a low release clause fee potentially lose us over 10m.
Ah here. He’s still a young lad who’s not really played at the top level.
I’m just making a point about the financial ramifications of inserting low fee release clauses in players contracts.
I don’t think we’ve done release clauses before but £20m should be the bare minimum if we do. We are on the doorstep of the EPL and Championship where average players routinely go for £20m.
Celtic were apparently in for this chap last season.
Matt O’Riley: Celtic’s new midfielder wanted by clubs across Europe – and was training with his dad in a park during pandemic
By Peter Rutzler Jan 20, 2022
14 
It was a conversation with Ange Postecoglou that persuaded Matt O’Riley that moving to Celtic was the right step for him.
The MK Dons midfielder was a man in demand. He had started every game in League One, English football’s third tier, for his club this season and his returns from central midfield, scoring seven goals and making five assists in those 26 matches, had more than caught the eye.
Clubs from all over Europe enquired about the 21-year-old’s availability. From Antwerp in Belgium, to Bordeaux in France, PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands and the trio of Torino, Sassuolo and Venezia in Italy’s Serie A, the list of clubs was long. His statistics were so impressive that they kept flagging up attention at Liverpool. Their fellow Premier League sides Burnley and Newcastle United were also thought to have considered a move for O’Riley.
The extent of that demand, which also included Championship sides Blackburn Rovers and Swansea City, meant a transfer somewhere this month felt almost certain.
Swansea were the initial favourites. O’Riley had struck up a very strong relationship with Russell Martin, their head coach, who had signed the former Fulham youngster for MK Dons last January. Martin was keen on a reunion in south Wales, however, despite a deal being progressed, Swansea ultimately were not able to meet the asking price.
Celtic’s interest was known but they did not come to the table until earlier this week.
In the space of almost 48 hours, the Glasgow giants went from a peripheral option to O’Riley’s new employers, with the youngster signing a four-and-a-half-year contract. Celtic had wanted to sign Australian midfielder Riley McGree from MLS club Charlotte FC. When that deal failed to happen, with McGree joining Middlesbrough of the English Championship instead last week, thoughts turned to O’Riley.
Manager Postecoglou went away and conducted his own analysis of O’Riley and came back effusive.
O’Riley, however, was initially a little sceptical; he had strong relationships with former manager Martin and his MK Dons boss Liam Manning and he did not know much about Celtic’s new Australian coach. But after speaking to Postecoglou over the phone about his plans for the future, he was left with no doubt whatsoever about where his future lay. It would be at Celtic Park.
After a medical on Wednesday, O’Riley travelled up to Scotland while a deal worth £1.5 million was working its way to a conclusion, the terms of which will see Fulham get a share of the spoils — understood to be as much as 50 per cent. This is due to the compensation deal struck between the two English clubs a year ago when O’Riley initially signed for the Milton Keynes side.
O’Riley has had an outstanding season for MK Dons in League One (Photo: John Cripps/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Fulham didn’t want to let him go when he left them, in the summer of 2020.
O’Riley spent 11 years on the books of the west London club, part of a talented cohort of players that saw him play alongside the likes of brothers Ryan and Steven Sessegnon, as well as Tyrese Francois.
He made his first appearance for Fulham Under-18s at 15, and his senior debut for the club at 16, in the early rounds of the 2017-18 League Cup. But it would take another two and a half years before his league debut, as a substitute on New Year’s Day in 2020, and with Fulham yo-yoing between the top divisions of English football, opportunities were few and far between.
Fulham offered him a good contract but it was that lack of perceived pathway that persuaded him to jump into the unknown rather than extend his stay.
He left mid-pandemic after first-team boss Scott Parker told him he did not want him to train with the group during Project Restart, having turned down that new deal. O’Riley then kept in shape on his own for four months, at times doing fitness sessions in a public park with his dad, before Martin offered him the chance to train with MK Dons.
O’Riley had made such an impression on his former Fulham team-mates that some contacted clubs overseas to highlight his availability.
“I knew it was a risk,” he told The Athletic in an interview last year. “The main thing people said to me was, ‘How can you turn down so much money (to re-sign with Fulham)?’ I completely get it. I understand some people might think it’s wrong to turn down the amount of money I was offered. But that money wasn’t going to further my career.
“Coming here (to MK Dons) has boosted me as a player, as a person — I know money will come later on, regardless — as long as I do well, as long as I play regularly. I back my ability and I know that I’ll go where I want to go.”
That focus on a best fit is why he chose Celtic and why a late swoop this week from West Bromwich Albion, who are thought likely to have offered him a better contract to join their Premier League promotion bid, was unlikely to succeed. With O’Riley, it is career progression that mattered most.
Celtic are an appealing fit for the midfielder, mainly due to their stature, the style of play they’ve developed in eight months under Postecoglou, as well as the opportunity to play in Europe. There is a clear pathway too at Celtic, while the departures of Odsonne Edouard and Kristoffer Ajer to Premier League clubs Crystal Palace and Brentford respectively last summer underline the club’s standing.
O’Riley, who only turned 21 in November, is seen as a well-rounded midfielder who is effective in all areas of the game. He can break up and recycle possession, is an effective dribbler and, as his goal-involvements numbers show, is able to both create for others and score himself. He spent most of his breakthrough years at Fulham playing as a No 8/No 10 type, before later being seen as a No 6 following Parker’s appointment in early 2019.
He likes to break forward, but has also featured as a deeper midfielder under Manning this season. O’Riley, who leaves MK Dons with them sitting in the League One play-off places, has featured in a two-man midfield, with a licence to get forward, playing within a highly possession-based system. He has a strong left foot, and an impressive passing range.
Smarterscout is a site that uses underlying advanced metrics to give players a rating from zero to 99 based on either how often they perform a given stylistic action or how effective they are at it compared with others playing their position.
The Smarterscout pizza chart below gives an indication of O’Riley’s stylistic tendencies as opposed to quality. It illustrates his ability to break up the play as well as to progress it up the field.
O’Riley may still be in the early stages of his career but he has also been earmarked for his leadership qualities, as he was handed MK Dons’ captaincy early in the season when Dean Lewington stepped up to be caretaker manager after Martin took the Swansea job.
Despite the transfer chatter that has surrounded him this month, he has maintained his performance levels, scoring the winner against rivals AFC Wimbledon last Tuesday and registering another assist in a 2-1 victory away to Portsmouth over the weekend.
“I like trying to be my own player,” O’Riley told The Athletic last year. “But also, I’ve got players I like and who I watch. In terms of those playing higher up, you have people like Kevin De Bruyne, whereas in a deeper role you look at Xavi, Iniesta. If I can just add bits of all their games to mine, that will always help, of course, but I’m someone that kind of wants to be my own player and see where my own player can go, given the opportunity.”
O’Riley’s skill set suggests he is being signed by Celtic as competition at No 8, given his game aligns neatly with Postecoglou’s characteristics for the role. He comes into a competitive position with Tom Rogic, David Turnbull and fellow January buy Reo Hatate, man of the match on debut against Hibernian on Monday night, all strong contenders for the role. Callum McGregor and Yosuke Ideguchi, another newcomer this month, can play there too.
But given O’Riley’s age and relative inexperience, with only one full year of senior football behind him, that could be a good thing, giving him an opportunity, as a rotation option, to gradually grow into his role with his new club without an immediate weight of expectation on his shoulders.
His signing follows a pattern at Celtic of recruiting younger players who can be developed in the long term.
On the international stage, O’Riley has represented England at under-16s and under-18s, but is also eligible for Denmark, through his mother Gitte, and Norway, through his maternal grandfather. O’Riley speaks Danish and of the two Scandinavian options, Denmark are thought to be most likely to pull him away from England.
If he can continue his rapid rise since leaving Fulham, it would not be a surprise to see him take that step in the not too distant future.
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sounds like someone has been making long distance calls to Siem Reap! if not that is eerily close to the deal Our Man in Cambodia actually hammered out, obviously with a built in hedge against a weakening Sterling.
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Ideguchi is now out for a while after that dreadful tackle at the weekend. FFS sake.
Ange:
"He’s not great. I said after the game it wasn’t too serious but to be fair I didn’t really get a good look at him.
"It was a terrible tackle and one which should have been addressed by the referee on the day. He hasn’t come out of it too well and will be missing for a little bit as well. He’s still pretty painful now. The kind of character he is, for him to stay down and come off I knew it was significant.
“I was optimistic it wasn’t too bad but as everyone can see from the footage it was a tackle that shouldn’t have happened and should have been addressed by the referee on the day.”
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I thought there were quite a few nasty challenges tbh. Cowardly ones, reckless at best, but to my mind more spiteful than that.
SHEFFIELD UNITED have walked away from a deal to take Vasilis Barkas from Celtic, according to reports.
The Blades were believed to be seriously interested in snapping up the Hoops flop - who is now third choice under Ange Postecoglou.
But the Daily Mail report the English Championship club have ditched a move over the financial demands involved.
They say Celtic wanted a loan fee on top of a huge percentage of his wages covered plus a £2.5million option to buy in the summer included.
The deal was also to include a percentage of any future sale.
Barkas is also believed to have had interest from an unnamed Swedish club but they were also priced out of a temporary move for the former AEK Athens man.
Joe Hart arrived at Celtic in the summer and has made the No1 jersey his own with big saves and confident displays for Postecoglou’s men.
Scott Bain is the current second choice at the club and has recently put pen to paper on a fresh contract.
That leaves Barkas well down the pecking order with just TWO appearances to his name this season.
He played in a Champions League qualifier back in the summer against FC Midtjylland before another very rare outing in the Boxing Day clash at St Johnstone.
Conor Hazard has already departed Celtic this month after joining HJK Helsinki on a season-loan as he searches for more first-team opportunities and experience.