Celtic thought they had signed the new Gareth Bale, now he's worth just £1m

In recent times, Celtic have been renowned for their business model at Parkhead of buying young players and selling them on for profit, a strategy that chief executive Michael Nicholson described as “successful on and off the field”.

This leads to plenty of players passing through the club, often for a very short period, sometimes making a ginormous impact, and other times leaving having made very little impression at all.

The latter is certainly true of a highly-rated youngster, once labelled “the Scottish Gareth Bale”, whose stint at Parkhead was, at best, unmemorable, and has certainly not lived up to his potential.

Celtic’s best and worst loanees

According to Transfermarkt, since 2017, Celtic have taken 16 senior players on loan, not including players such as Daizen Maeda, Jota, Paulo Bernardo, Adam Idah nor Cameron Carter-Vickers, who initially arrived on loan, before making the move permanent.

So, here they all are in all their glory. We bet there are some names on this list you’d completely forgotten about…

Fair to say, looking at this list, it’s a real mixed bag, with Mohamed Elyounoussi and Patrick Roberts, almost unquestionably, the two best, both in terms of longevity and output.

On the flip side, the trio that arrived during the behind-closed-doors 2020/21 season, namely Shane Duffy, Jonjoe Kenny and Diego Laxalt, were not great were they, making it very little surprise that campaign was such a catastrophe.

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One player on that list, who made fewer than 20 appearances in hoops, managed by both Brendan Rodgers and Neil Lennon during his brief time at the club, had massive potential, but never fulfilled that hype.

Celtic once had the ‘Scottish Gareth Bale’

Oliver Burke was once described, as noted by analyst Kai Watson, as the ‘Scottish Gareth Bale’, with sky-high expectations placed upon his shoulders, hence why RB Leipzig paid a reported £13m for his services, signing him from Nottingham Forest in 2016 when he was still a teenager.

However, as outlined by Mark Walker of the Herald, Burke has had a ‘peculiar career’ since then, viewed as an ‘unpolished diamond’ when he first broke into Forest’s first team, with Steve Madeley of the Athletic describing him as ‘rampaging’ and ‘speedy’.

However, his manager at Leipzig, Ralf Rangnick, essentially intimated that Burke was unable to take on tactical instructions, so his time in Saxony did not go as planned.

The Scotland international, still only 27-years-old, was sold to West Bromwich Albion for £15m in 2017, but made just 24 appearances for the Baggies, loaned out to Celtic, for whom he scored four goals, including this brace against St Mirren.

Since departing Parkhead, Burke has represented Depotivo Alavés, Sheffield United, Millwall twice and Birmingham City, with Joseph Chapman of Birmingham Live describing his loan spell at St Andrew’s as ‘miserable’.

So, where is he in 2025 and how is he doing? Well, the Scot is back in the Bundesliga with Werder Bremen, joining die Grün-Weißen in 2022, but making only 36 appearances for them so far, albeit he was on target during Tuesday’s DFB-Pokal defeat at the hands of 3.Liga side Arminia Bielefeld.

At this peak, Burke was bought for £15m, but is now valued at less than £1m by Transfermarkt, merely a footnote in Celtic’s treble success of 2018/19.

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