GaryMc93

(Left to Right) Grant Thorburn, Michael Hewitt, Mark McKenzie, Leon Murphy and Gabe Skeoch. Nathan Baird has also signed a new deal but isn't pictured.

Thankfully some people on here aren’t in charge or we’d need the buckets out at the end of every season to pay for everyone’s wage rises. Nobody offered a contract so far is irreplaceable and I’m sure the club would survive if Moffat and all his goals left again. In his 4 games McCowan offered energy and direct running that was sadly missing from most of our play during the 2nd half of the season. I've no problem with us giving him an opportunity to show if he can do it over a longer period.

Given it’s unlikely we’ll get a striker as prolific as Shankland we need the rest of the team to chip in with more goals. Before January we certainly weren’t a one man team but did end up becoming over reliant on Shankland to carry us through in the league. His 24 goals were scored over 16 games, Moffat (5 goals over 4 games )and Moore (4 in 3 games). Out with the strikers the best was McDaid on 4. From the players currently under contract for the upcoming season Forrest and McCowan seem capable of scoring around 5 each from midfield not so much Murdoch and Docherty. If they stayed you’d be hoping Moffat, McDaid and Moore could add a couple more to last season’s total. Adding a winger, a centre midfielder and a centre back who can help on the goal front might ease some of the burden on whoever is given the task of replacing Shankland. As for Doohan I imagine whoever Celtic’s next manager is will have a look at him in pre-season especially with De Vries leaving, concerns over Gordon’s fitness and Bain being average. Hopefully they bring in a new No.1 and we can get him back but since this is the club that once cancelled Scott Fox’s loan because their 3rd choice keeper got injured I’m not sure we should put our eggs all in the one basket.

My main point from the 2013 thing was he obviously had talent at 15 (and not that PSG were wanting him to replace Neymar) and it's likely that had he been at anyone else outwith the Old Firm he would have been given more of an opportunity at the time. I doubt 4 games for Celtic and the fact that his first taste of regular first team football was at 20 with Dundee this season has helped him develop since. Neither does Brendan Rodgers wanting to turn him into a left back because he did it previous with Ryan Bertrand. Definitely the type of player we should be going for and he only has to look at Shankland etc. to see that it's a good club for players whose career hasn't turned out as they'd hoped.