Kieron Bowie at £6.5m: Celtic's Low-Risk, High-Reward No.9 Bet

Experience, International Caps and Development Potential of Hibs striker Kieron Bowie makes his reported £6.5m transfer fee a steal for the Scottish champions.

Celtic cannot afford another transfer window blunder like the summer and they certainly can’t let Hibernian striker Kieron Bowie escape their grasp in what would, in my opinion, be another John McGinn-style transfer failure.

The 24 year old has scored 15 goals in 50 games and is reportedly being priced at £6.5 million by the Easter Road side. Despite his relatively young age, his Scottish top-flight nous, international caps and development trajectory screams “Celtic must-sign,” especially after a decade of striker flops that have hemorrhaged cash while successes like Kyogo Furuhashi and Odsonne Édouard proved the model works when executed correctly - but never when it comes to top Scottish talent?

Yet we are now rumoured to be in talks to sign 24 year old Ivory Coast striker Mohamed Bamba on loan with an option-to-buy from French Ligue One outfit Lorient - who has scored just one goal in 15 games this season. Another clear indication that Celtic’s scouting system is non-existent when Celtic’s hierarchy go running to their favourite Israeli agent Dudu Dahan who represents the player.

Why are this Celtic board refusing or failing to realise that maybe just maybe a striker close to home would provide a greater impact with no bedding in period trying to get used to the nature of the Scottish game. Leigh Griffiths and Anthony Stokes are two Hibernian players who made the move along the M8 to Celtic Park and they did not bad - so why not Bowie?

Bowie not only fits this lineage, he elevates it at a time when Celtic are in desperate need of a striker who can hit the ground running.

Both Bowie and Bamba represent similar striking profiles - young, physical strikers - but Bowie is a target man-poacher hybrid with the physicality suited for the Scottish game, while Bamba has similar traits he is more suited to dribbling at defences and laying the ball off to team mates - with key weaknesses in his play around ball retention and a lack of offside awareness.

​So why would Bowie thrive at Celtic where others have flopped in recent years? His experience of the Scottish game for starters, he is already physically prepared for doing battle in our league [unlike many of our recent foreign imports] and at Celtic he would revel in the service he is provided. He has international pedigree both at Under-21 level and as a Full International with Steve Clarke’s World Cup bound Scotland team. Don’t forget that at 24, he has huge potential to develop further, but ultimately a year on from failing to sign a replacement for Kyogo - Bowie is a player that ticks all the boxes while Mohamed Bamba has plenty of question marks beside his potential signing.

Given that the club paid out £5 million for flop Albian Ajeti, then signing Bowie is a no brainer at £6.5 million, given his huge potential both on the pitch and his resale value.

For a club like Celtic not to have a first team ready striker on their books it is not only scandalous but it’s sheer neglect from the Celtic hierarchy. We have been subjected to dross over the years - flops costing treble their worth due to the board’s incompetence and last minute deals to try to whitewash over failed European qualifying campaigns - but the past few years have been the worst in decades.

Downsizing our squad for profit and then signing dross packaged up as project players as replacements have eroded trust and belief in a Celtic board that clearly have no ambition to improve the product on the pitch with everything focused on how much profit they can make each year instead.

Rather than signing another one of Dudu Dahan’s duds on loan for a few months, how about the club shows some ambition for once and sign a proven Scottish Premiership striker, a Scottish international, and a player for the here and now - as much as for the future as well.

If we fail to sign Bowie and let Rangers sign him or we sign Dudu’s Bamba instead, it will be another spectacular own goal from this Celtic board.