Celtic flop who was “surplus to requirements” is now on fire after leaving

Given Celtic’s business model of buying young players at a low cost, providing them a platform on which to perform and ultimately selling them on at a profit, the Hoops experience more squad turnover than most.

Matt O’Riley is a prime example of this transfer strategy, arriving from Milton Keynes Dons for just £1.5m in January 2022, before being sold to Brighton & Hove Albion for £25m last summer, a joint-record sale for a Scottish club, alongside Kieran Tierney’s move to Arsenal in 2019 and Jota who joined Al-Ittihad in 2023.

This merry-go-round has seen plenty of top-quality strikers donning the famous Hoops during the last decade or so, including Moussa Dembele, Odsonne Edouard, Giorgos Giakoumakis and current first-choice centre-forward Kyogo Furuhashi to name but a few.

Celtic do often get their recruitment right, particularly at the top end of the park, but this certainly isn’t always the case.

Celtic’s worst-ever transfer window?

Following the summer window in 2020, Celtic put out this now infamous “Just sitting there thinking… what a window” tweet, mocking former striker Charlie Nicholas, who had criticised the club’s recruitment, but it turned out he was right.

Of the players pictured, Vasilis Barkas, Shane Duffy and Albian Ajeti were massive flops, Diego Laxalt was underwhelming, David Turnbull was decent, albeit but didn’t live up to his potential, and Mohamed Elyounoussi was sporadically impressive, but without much consistency.

The Hoops’ poor recruitment in 2020 actually extended back to the pre-pandemic January window too, paying £2m for Ismaila Soro’s services from Bnei Yehuda, while Patryk Klimala arrived from Jagiellonia Białystok for £3.5m.

Given that the world shut down and football was suspended mere weeks after his arrival in Glasgow, Klimala made just four appearances, totalling 101 minutes, during his first half-season at Celtic, but there was optimism he could have an impact the following year after an impressive showing in pre-season, most-notably scoring the goal below against Nice.

He then netted on the opening day of the Premiership season as the Bhoys hammered Hamilton Accies 5-1, on target shortly after being introduced as a substitute.

This though, was very much not the start of something, with Klimala scoring just three times in 28 appearances during what proved to be a catastrophic campaign, as Neil Lennon’s team ended up trophyless, finishing a whopping 25 points behind Rangers, with 20/21 still the only campaign since 2010/11 in which Celtic have not been crowned champions.

The Polish striker unceremoniously departed in April 2021, described as “surplus to requirements” by Noel Whelan in Football Insider, sold to New York Red Bulls for $4.8m, with Celtic remarkably getting their money back, despite his unnoteworthy stint in Glasgow, with Klimala becoming something of a globe trotter subsequently.

Patryk Klimala’s post-Celtic career

Similar to Celtic, the New York Red Bulls almost certainly regret paying £3.5m for Klimala’s services.

He was actually their top-scorer with eight in 2021, as the New Jersey-based franchise finished 14th in the overall Major League Soccer standings, scoring just 14 goals in 63 appearances overall, losing his starting spot as RBNY improved in 2022.

As a result, the following January, he was sold to Israeli-based club Hapoel Be’er Sheva, scoring a miserly four goals in 23 outings, before his contract was mutually terminated towards the end of 2023 following the escalation of the Israel–Hamas war.

Śląsk Wrocław, back in his native Poland, took a chance on Klimala, but this did not pay off, failing to score in any of his 11 Ekstraklasa appearances for the Militarians, so much so that he was disregarded to their reserve side, who ply their trade in the Polish fourth-tier, unsurprisingly scoring four in four at that level, including a hat-trick against Górnik Polkowice, but this would prove to be just the start of his scoring spree.

In September 2024, Klimala joined A-League side Sydney FC and, despite now plying his trade on the other side of the world, he appears to have found a home.

Now 26 years old, he’s scored seven goals in 11 outings for the Sky Blues, bagging the winner on his A-League debut, which just so happened to be a Sydney derby against Western Sydney Wanderers.

He was on target in another Sydney derby victory in late November too, before continuing his scoring spree in defeat at Central Coast Mariners on Sunday, as the Sky Blues sit sixth in the A-League standings.

As outlined by the table, the striker has flourished at the start of his life Down Under so, while this doesn’t suggest Celtic should have kept hold of him, it does emphasise that just because a player doesn’t work out at one club, or four in this case, it doesn’t mean they won’t thrive at the right level and in the right environment.