Dedryck Boyata has got Celtic by the short and curlies now. The defender holds all the aces as he looks towards the January window and runs down his contract.

And I think Celtic will be kicking themselves for the way the Boyata situation has played out.

I was pleased to hear the defender speak on his situation because I think it is far too easy for players to go and hide behind their agent.

But I suspect that when Fulham came in with the £9m for him in the middle of August that Celtic banked on the player getting them through the qualifiers and a team coming in for him at the last minute with a bigger bid. Neither transpired and, of course, no-one could really have predicted that Boyata would throw the toys out of the pram in the way that he did.

Glasgow Times:
John Hartson

I could understand why Celtic didn’t sell him when Fulham came in. I think the feeling was that it would be too big a risk going into massive qualifiers without him and trying to bed in a new player for the biggest games of the season although, as I say, few of us would have guessed that Boyata would make himself unavailable anyway.

In fairness to Celtic I think a decent offer would have been made before Russia to the player. But he and his agent were canny enough to foresee that he’d be in a far better situation to negotiate on the back of a strong World Cup and that is the way it has played out. But it means Celtic now face losing their best defender and getting not a penny back on him walking out of the door.

To be honest, though, aside from his moment of stupidity at McDiarmid Park he has been one of Celtic’s best players. So long as he keeps his focus and does his job then I don’t think you can point too many fingers now.