Wing Light, Wing Bright, First Wing We See Tonight

Given the amount of speculation about Celtic signing players who play as “wingers” since January, I have spent a fair amount of time benchmarking various rumored targets. Here is a quick list:

1. Sondre Orjasaeter

2. Bazoumana Toure

3. Michel-Ange Balikwisha

4. Nilson Angulo

5. Benjamin Nygren

6. Jakob Breum

Orjasaeter was signed by FC Twente in August for around £4.3 to £5.2 million per public reporting.

Toure signed with Hoffenheim in early February for around £8.6 million.

Balikwisha remains at Royal Antwerp with reports this week that an impasse on valuation may have Celtic walking away from the £4-£5 million asking price.

The latest report I can find on Angulo is rumored interest from newly promoted La Liga side, Elche, but very quiet on any Celtic-related rumors for over a month.

Nygren is obviously a Celtic player, but who has been played mostly as an attacking midfielder/#8.

Breum is part of the reporting on extremely low bids being submitted by Celtic for players this window, and has opened the season at Go Ahead Eagles playing as their #10 in their 4-2-3-1.

I actually like all of the players listed and found a degree of encouragement when conducting my benchmarking exercises - i.e. a leap forward in coherence from the summer of 2023 signings such as Yang and Kwon. As we have seen with Kwon’s move to Nantes in Ligue 1, profile of players relative to roles within systems is vitally important.

Directional improvement is encouraging relative to talent identification, but as we have seen with Shin Yamada, details matter in order to turn progress into a leap towards durable success at moving the club forward competing in Europe.