Making sense of Celtic’s top 10 most expensive transfer exits

Taking a look at the top 10 Celtic player sales of all-time opens up an interesting debate.

After looking at Celtic’s all-time top-ten most expensive transfer fee purchases, we’ve now turned the focus on our top-10 transfer fee sales. It’s another really thought provoking list.

The list was compiled by Celtic by numbers, which is well worth a look for great numerical analysis and their tweet below shows the top ten. Let’s take a look at the sales list and then what that tells us.

When looking at our record purchase it was evident that we hadn’t kept pace with the rises in the transfer market with over half of our top fees paid dating back around 20 years and even more recent purchases being for sums that aren’t significantly higher. The sales list tells a different story.

Historically it was hard for Scottish clubs to demand large fees for players when selling. But Celtic have become quite well practiced over recent years and have been securing much higher deals. Maybe they could have done even better when we see some of our sales moving on to other clubs for even higher fees. Peter Lawwell seems to have a plan to mitigate that though.

Let’s not forget the amounts shown don’t include sell-on clauses. Virgil Van Djik had a well structured sale to Southampton which brought in around £10 million more for Celtic. So even if his later £75 million move to Liverpool may have made fans think he was worth more when sold by the hoops, the club still did rather well overall.

Talking of Southampton,  the list shows the benefit of having great practical business relationships with other clubs. The Saints being prolific buyers of our top players. We have four player sales to them totalling £41 million on our top ten sales list. I’m sure St. Mary’s is on Lawwell’s Christmas card address list.

Although we sold Stan Petrov and Mark Viduka for around £6 million, which were hefty fees at the time, and then Ki Sung-Yeung for a similar but more modest relatively sum in 2012, Aiden McGeady’s sale felt like a breakthrough moment. Spartak Moscow agreed to pay £9.5 million for him back in 2010 and set a benchmark for future top player sales to beat. That led to the prices for Victor Wanyama, Fraser Forster and Virgil van Djik being higher and very significant sales for Celtic. Although Stuart Armstrong went for less than the other Saints headed sales, his £7 million fee was well respected by Celtic fans as a very good deal. These deals also perfectly illustrate the profitable success from buying potential talent to shape, develop and sell on.

Having started to bring in those enormous fees from Southampton, Celtic raised the sales game with some stubborn negotiating to secure almost £20 million for Moussa Dembele  to Lyon.  And there’s further high hopes of a sell-on fee for when he inevitably moves on, perhaps this summer if the Manchester United based rumours prove true.

There is a definite divergence, positively in the clubs bank balance favour, between record signing fees vs record sales fees. As and when some of our current star players move on it’s almost inevitable we’ll see them break into this top-10 list. Much in the same way it was well known that when, at the time fan favourite,  Kieran Tierney moved on it would have to be for a record fee. Tierney sits at the top of the list for now, and despite many mixed views on his move, he’ll have been proud to have contributed to the club so strongly in financial terms.

The sales have been a mix of selling some players at their peak and getting maximum value, with a few who have struggled since their moves to settle or play to their potential as seen at Celtic, McGeady, Armstrong, Ki Sung-Yeung for example. Others like Van Dijk and Dembele generate more for Celtic via sell-on fees. And Fraser Forster is back on loan currently and recapturing his best form.

Celtic seem to have got the best from these players one way or another. At some stage, but hopefully not until after 10-in-a-row, we can all expect to see Odsonne Edouard smash this league table too.