John Hartson has backed Celtic’s decision to reject a second Arsenal bid for Kieran Tierney.
News of the offer emerged on Saturday night with £18m guaranteed with a further £7m in add-ons dependent on the success of the player and the club.
With Arsenal failing to qualify for the Champions League in each of the last three seasons success looks further away than ever with Gunners fans having to go back 15 years to when they could call their side ‘Champions of England’.
Unai Emery has lost Aaron Ramsay to Juventus on a Bosman deal and is watching the once proud club putting in low-ball bids for Tierney and Wilfried Zaha that aren’t likely to being the selling club to the negotiating table.
Speaking to Super Scoreboard last night Hartson said:
It’s Celtic’s prerogative to turn down the bid, Kieran Tierney is a fantastic player, he’s done brilliantly well over the last two, three, four seasons. Playing in the Champions League and winning lots of trophies.
In the modern day market players are going for silly money, £25m is clearly not enough, Celtic have turned that bid down, whether Arsenal come back or decide that the deal is dead and move on to another one I’m sure that the Celtic supporters will hope that it’s the latter.
I think that Neil Lennon’s team will be competitive again this year, Rangers as well, I think they’ve bought 28 players under Steven Gerrard, how you keep all those players happy I will never know but going back to Kieran Tierney he is a wonderful player and obviously Celtic value him at a lot more than £25m and I would of course agree with that.
Celtic have signed Boli Bolingoli Mbombo to provide cover and competition for Tierney who is under contract until 2023.
CLICK HERE to listen to the Hartson interview 15 minutes into the podcast.