Mark Wilson believes that soon-to-be signing Alexandro Bernabei can emulate the impact made by Emilio Izaguirre at Celtic.
Neil Lennon was in the early stages of turning Celtic around when he brought in the Honduran international to the position that Lee Naylor and Edson Braafheid had toiled in the previous season.
Joe Ledley, Gary Hooper, Tony Stokes, Efrain Juarez and Beram Kayal provided new energy to the Celtic side at the start of the 2010/11 season with £700,000 signing Izaguirre immediately at home playing at left-back.
The Honduran had an incredible debut season but never quite regained those levels after breaking his ankle early in September 2011. Even so he enjoyed great success with Celtic as the club’s first and only Honduran player.
Bernabei is expected to complete his move from Lanus this week with Wilson excited by the arrival of the attack minded full-back.
Recalling another arrival back in 2010, Wilson told The Sun:
Emilio was fantastic. When he came in we didn’t know too much about him but I remember his first day at Lennoxtown.
We were all up in the gym, where the windows look out over the pitch and there he was, doing sprints, box-to-box and round poles. We thought, ‘This boy looks fit’. The next question was whether he was good on the ball. And he was.
I was with somebody on Friday night who has been watching Bernabei for a couple of years and we had the conversation.
This guy was going to sign him for another club and he told me he is a full-back who will bomb on all day long.
Small, loads of energy and good on the ball. It sounds like he ticks every box. It’s obvious the Celtic scouting team have made the same reports and it sounds like he will fit in.
Lanus are in action tonight and again on Thursday, delaying the transfer till Friday will allow Bernabei to serve out a two match suspension.
