It will go down as one of the great sliding doors moments of the 2020/21 season.
As the new season got underway with critical Champions League qualifiers looming Celtic had problems in attack.
Leigh Griffiths had returned from Lockdown badly out of condition, Odsonne Edouard was a different problem with speculation linking him with a move away from the club.
Patryk Klimala hadn’t shown anything to suggest that he was upto the standard required with Vakoun Bayo falling into the same category.
Down at Peterbrough Ivan Toney was creating some headlines with Barry Fry on hand for some additional sales pitch.
Interestingly Celtic had brought in Gavin Strachan to join Neil Lennon’s coaching staff, Gordon’s son had just left the assistant manager’s job at Peterbrough.
Celtic had the inside track on Toney, reaching the Champions League would bring in £30m in a season of uncertainty.
Lennon was asked about the striker on Radio Scotland this morning, picking up on the interview The Sun reports the former Celtic boss saying:
We had Toney in the building at Lennoxtown when we were in France [for pre-season], so we were well down the line with that one. Why didn’t the deal go through? Just finances, I assume.
If Toney took the bother of travelling to Lennoxtown while the Celtic squad and management were in France deals to suit both clubs and the player must have been agreed in principle.
Celtic played matches in France on July 16, 18 and 21. On August 13 Albian Ajeti signed from West Ham, on August 31, after Celtic had been knocked out of the Champions League by Ferencvaros, Toney was transferred to Brentford from Peterborough.
After a promising start Ajeti scored just one goal from the end of September. In the Championship Toney scored 31 goals as Brentford won promotion to the EPL for the first time ever.
No one can say for certain if Toney would have been as successful at Celtic as he was at Brentford but 10 months on his career is in a far healthier position that Ajeti is in as he prepares to check-in for pre-season training at Lennoxtown.
