Neil Lennon doesn’t need the patronising approval of English experts to confirm that Kieran Tierney is a top class player.
The defender has earned glowing praise after two cup tie appearances for Arsenal with an element of surprise thrown in that someone from Scotland can actually step straight into the side and make an improvement.
Tierney only cost a third of the fee shelled out on Nicolas Pepe but looks far better value with the Ivory Coast winger doing little to justify his record price tag of £72m.
Against Bournemouth on Sunday Tierney is likely to make his EPL debut with Lennon far from flattered at the reflected praise that Celtic have received from the defenders’ opening performances.
Speaking to Celtic TV the hoops boss said:
Kieran is a top player, Arsenal paid a premium price for him and they’ve given him the time to recover from his injury.
We’re very proud of what he has achieved here and hope that he goes on to achieve great things at Arsenal but we now have a track record of not only producing our own players but finding others under the radar and they move on to the Premier League.
We stand alone on that, we’re Celtic we want to produce our own players. I’m not interested in what other people think of players that we sell on, we know that they are good players when they leave.
I don’t need other opinions or their surprise to tell me that they are good players. We knew Kieran was a top player, we knew van Dijk, we knew Wanyama, we knew that Forster was a top player so it’s no surprise to me that Kieran has started so well
With Celtic and Arsenal both topping their Europa League groups the prospect remains alive for KT to Celtic Park later this season to play against the club that he joined as a seven-year-old.