Brendan Rodgers has accused Peter Lawwell of being keen to sell Kieran Tierney to Arsenal for £10m three years ago.
The Wishaw bhoy was already a fixture in the Celtic side when Rodgers replaced Ronnie Deila in May 2016 with a major overhaul anticipated.
The new boss got rid of players such as Anthony Stokes, Carlton Cole and Colin Kazim-Richards but his main achievement was in getting much more out of the squad that he inherited.
Mikael Lustig, Stuart Armstrong, James Forrest and Tom Rogic were barely recognisable while Tierney’s development accelerated as he played alongside Scott Sinclair on the left.
During the previous summers Celtic had sold Victor Wanyama, Fraser Forster and Virgil van Dijk for £10m plus to England with Rodgers claiming that only his intervention prevented Tierney being added to that list as soon as he took over at Celtic.
“The very first week I was there I was told that there was interest from Arsenal for around about 10 million quid,” the Leicester boss told the Daily Record.
“Peter Lawwell was very clear that this was an opportunity that was there for Kieran. But obviously we didn’t want the player to go and it was my job to try to convince him to stay.
“You have to be transparent with players in a situation like that so I just said, ‘Listen, we could have a great cycle here. I really want to develop you and make you a better player’.
“I think very quickly he enjoyed the training; he enjoyed the work and he enjoyed the culture we were trying to create. Thankfully he decided he was going to commit to another deal which was absolutely great news for us all.
“He was a big talent and we wanted to hang on to our best talents. So he stayed and he gave everything to Celtic, increased his market value and then ended up moving there for the price that he did.”
Rodgers discussing being transparent with players is rather ironic. In February he took the Celtic squad training on a Monday preparing them to face Hearts two days later then slipped out of Lennoxtown to travel south to join Leicester City the following day.
Should Rodgers shut up about Celtic and get on with dedicating his life to Leicester?
Yes, get on with it, move on
No, it's good that he still cares for us
After leaving for Leicester, Celtic published a statement thanking Rodgers for his time at the club. Celtic picked up £8.8m in compensation for losing their management team but that deal is likely to have included a confidentiality clause that business during his time at the club doesn’t become public. By claiming that Lawwell was interested in selling Tierney it appears that the deal between Celtic and Rodgers has been broken.