Anthony Joseph has tweeted that talks to bring Gustaf Lagerbielke to Celtic are progressing well.
Late on Monday Swedish publisher Expressen broke the news that Celtic were interested in signing the Elfsborg defender with a fee of £3m discussed.
Lagerbielke has spoken enthusiastically about the move but there has been little on the record about developments since the report in Expressen.
When Brendan Rodgers met the media on Wednesday he neither encouraged or denied Celtic’s interest but with less than three weeks left in the transfer window now is the time to step up negotiations.
UPDATE: Talks between Celtic and Elfsborg for Gustaf Lagerbielke are understood to be progressing well.
There’s a willingness from all sides to get a deal done, as the centre-back is keen to move to the Scottish champions this summer. https://t.co/7d7MhvQO4d
— Anthony Joseph (@AnthonyRJoseph) August 10, 2023
Yesterday Carl Stafelt completed his transfer to Celta Vigo with the move for Lagerbielke appearing to be running in parallel, even to the extent that Stafelt’s agent, Blash Hosseini is reported to be involved in talks over Lagerbielke.
On Sunday Elfsborg are away to Hammerby in the Allsvenskan, Celtic fans will be keeping a keen eye on team news for that match.
With Starfelt gone barring a swift late move Brendan Rodgers will be down one significant central defender for Sunday’s trip to Aberdeen.
Even if Lagerbielke’s transfer goes through today it wouldn’t be ideal to have someone in Sunday’s squad with just one training session to their name.
Stephen Welsh and Liam Scales both missed out on the matchday squad against Ross County but one of them will be called in to Sunday’s squad to provide cover for Cameron Carter-Vickers and Maik Nawrocki.
Celtic paid around £4.2m for the Pole with that transfer completed six days after it first surfaced in the Polish media.
Next Sunday Celtic are away to Kilmarnock in the Viaplay Cup followed by a home match against St Johnstone then the much anticipated match at Ibrox on September 3- after the transfer window has closed.
Last summer Ange Postecoglou spent a net £20m on his first team squad with £13m of that used to convert the deals for Jota and Carter-Vickers into permanent moves.
Around £3m was spent each on Alexandro Bernabei and Sead Haksabanovic with Ben Siegrist and Aaron Mooy signed as free agents. Nir Bitton and Tom Rogic left as free agents.
After the successes of last season boosted by the return of Champions League income Celtic reported larger than expected expected profits to the Stock Market.
Even allowing for Benfica’s cut in the Jota deal Celtic have raised around £21m from transfer business this summer with around £10m spent with around half of that going on Nawrochi.
CLICK HERE for Lagerbielke’s Transfermarkt profile.
1 Comment
by Justshatered
We are now back to glacial transfer activity.
All the reports about Rodgers having a big budget, and remember that was before Jota was sold, looks to gave been another con job..
We’ve also told the stock market that we’ve had better than expected results.
From the January transfer window until today the club is in profit to about £22M and we already had about £30M in the bank.
The club seems to be operating with the handbrake on.
If the manager wants the Swedish centre half pay the money and get the guy in or are we going tk wait until someone else comes and buys him and say the usual “we did our best”