Brendan Rodgers has been accused of playing a role in Kieran Tierney’s transfer of agent that eventually led to his £25m transfer to Arsenal.
In June 2016 the defender signed a five year contract with the hoops negotiated by Raymond Sparkes. A year earlier he had also signed a five year contract in recognition of making his debut.
When he signed another contract, in October 2017 he had switched to the Stellar Group with Celtic fans rejoicing at the news he had signed a SIX year contract that was reported to have put him among the leading earners at the club.
The Stellar Group is headed up by Jonathan Barnett with John Inglis and Allan Preston among the agents all working in the field.
Patrick Roberts and Scott Sinclair are both with the Stellar Group, yesterday on Radio Scotland’s Off The Ball programme Sparkes opened up on the Rodgers connection that eventually took Tierney to London.
Asked about his first thoughts on Tierney’s transfer to Arsenal, Sparkes said:
Inevitable springs to mind. As you rightly say I negotiated his second last contract at Celtic which was for five years.
At the end of my written contract with him, I would of course have been keen to take that to the next level but I don’t mind saying that there were certain influences at work. I felt that to the largest extent he was being taken off in a direction by Brendan Rodgers, I don’t mind saying, it’s certainly quite an allegation, but the truth is kind of unsurprisingly he ended up with the agency that was closest to Brendan.
I can’t help but think that he was put in a position where he was sold the idea that if he was going onto greater, bigger things then perhaps he should be dealing with an English based agency.
The odd thing was that he didn’t renew with me, it didn’t come as a great surprise, he went with the new agent and odder than that Celtic then added a year to his contract which I found strange. To have four years left on his contract as he did why was there a need for Celtic to add another year which they did.
CLICK HERE to listen to the interview from 2 minutes 50 seconds
Tierney completed a five year contract with Arsenal shortly before the transfer window closed on Thursday.