Has Neil Lennon spiked Celtic’s £25m ‘Tierney to Arsenal done deal’?

At 10.30pm on Saturday night, almost as if it was synchronised, news broke that the fabled second Arsenal bid for Kieran Tierney had reached the magical figure of £25m.

Apparently it is a done deal with the defender all set to join a club that is fast becoming irrelevant in terms of trophies with a healthy wedge to be delivered into Celtic’s already bulging bank account.

The source and motivation for this update can be guessed at but according to his club manager Tierney seems about a month away from playing with what appears to be an underlying medical issue hovering overhead. It almost reads like David Turnbull.

Transfer profits have helped Celtic greatly since Aiden McGeady was sold to CSKA Moscow in 2010, Lennon got virtually the whole transfer fee and created a brand new team that launched the current run of success.

In recent times however it’s began to look like profits in the transfer market has been almost as important as success on the pitch, some might think that both are equal priorities.

Today you can read Lennon explaining how difficult it is to find a like for like replacement for Mikael Lustig- imagine how much harder it will be to replace KT?

The English transfer window closes on August 8, while players are bought to make an impact over the duration of their contract Arsenal wouldn’t be wanting to wait until October or November to see how their expensive new left-back from a ‘Mickey Mouse league’ performs.

By the autumn it’s likely that they’ll be 10 points off top place and looking over their shoulders to see if Everton, West Ham or Leicester are looking to edge them out of the top six. Unai Emery may be having to justify his continued employment.

Lennon has been inside Scottish football for almost two decades, he knows how news is managed or even manipulated. News of a second Tierney bid going viral wouldn’t have come as any surprise to the Celtic boss.

After touching on Tierney’s osteitis pubis problem in Friday’s broadcast media conference he went into far greater detail when he sat down with the daily publishers to set Saturday’s agenda.

The Sun reported him saying:

KT still has the osteitis pubis problem so it’s a slow burner that one. We will need to get to the bottom of that. In terms of the double hernia, that’s all sorted now. But Kieran is still saying he’s a bit sore to start running.

I don’t think it gets any worse, but there’s just a constant dull pain there. Eventually, you can mature out of it. I have seen that but right now, he still has a lot of discomfort with it and it’s an issue. The rest won’t do Kieran any harm at all. I think he will  benefit from it.

We don’t want him to be out for too long, but we need to get him right. He now has some competition in Boli  Bolingoli too, so that means he can step in. That might take the weight off Kieran a bit.

With money tight around The Emirates, with Emery a couple of defeats away from crisis point Arsenal might not be so keen on signing a player a month away from starting his pre-season work as some are imagining.

Meanwhile, James Forrest who signed a new four year contract in September 2018, is going to be offered a new contract for life..