Cameron Harper..

The Lennon effect

 

Celtic winger Cameron Harper, a U.S. youth international, is in advanced discussions with the New York Red Bulls to sign a pre-contract that would bring him to the MLS side in the summer, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the talks, report Paul Tenorio and Sam Stejskal.

Harper made his debut for Celtic last week in a 1-1 draw with Hibernian, playing 61 minutes. The 19-year-old featured for Celtic’s reserve team over the past two seasons and has been on the verge of breaking into a regular role with Celtic’s first team, making the bench on multiple occasions before finally playing last week.

He is out of contract at the end of the season, but Celtic have made offers to try to keep him in Scotland. A California native, Harper holds a Scottish passport, as both of his parents were born and raised in Scotland.

Harper was set to feature for the U.S. Under-20 team in qualifiers and the Under-20 World Cup this summer before both competitions were cancelled. Now, he’ll look to return to the U.S. with a Red Bull team that is undergoing a makeover with a new coach, Gerhard Struber, and new sporting director, Kevin Thelwell.

“Everything is just happening quite quickly and changing so fast,” Harper told The Athletic in an exclusive interview last September.

“I’m developing faster than I thought I would two years ago. I thought my ceiling was a certain height, but now I think it’s a bit higher. Right now I’m just trying to get first-team football.”

Harper will be seeking consistent first-team minutes at a time when more MLS teams are featuring young domestic players. Many of Harper’s likely U.S. Under-20 team-mates, including Colorado’s Cole Bassett, Sporting KC’s Gianluca Busio, Atlanta’s George Bello and FC Dallas’ Bryan Reynolds saw significant playing time in MLS last season.

 

Another promising youngster offski then. What a club.

 

To be fair he looked very far out of his depth the other night, particularly as he is 19 which isn’t exactly a young boy.

Granted it was his debut and the circumstances weren’t great, but I wouldn’t be clamouring over him at this point.

 

The fact that it took 13 of our players to go into isolation before he got a minute on the pitch is bad enough.

That article says we've made offers to keep him at the club. Why have we done that if there's no intention to give him any game time? The club has lost a few promising young players in the last couple of years because we're pish at giving minutes to players outside a select 17/18.

 

They came, they saw, they fecked off. Seriously, if there's anyone out there with any good news then gonny post it as I'm seriously * off with all this bad news.

 

Be interesting to look at the youngsters we managed to keep under Rodgers and the ones we’ve lost since...

 

I've seen enough of him to say I'd prefer he stayed.

I'm not sure why he'd want to at this point in time.

 

There are many issues wrong with the club at the moment but I’m not really agreeing that we have let a lot of promising 17/18 year old players leave.

I think the crux of it is that many of them are just not good enough when they get to that stage. I can’t think of many, if any, 16/17/18 year old youngsters we have let go in the last 10 years that have made it big-time anywhere.

For me, we shouldn’t be forcing in youth players for the sake of it, particularly when we are expecting to win near enough every domestic game.

However, the ones who were good enough to feed themselves into the first team (with no need for COVID isolations) like McGregor, Tierney, Forrest and Henderson have done well for themselves.

The problem for me originates from not developing youngsters right at junior level - a problem across Scotland as a whole. We just aren’t seeing enough good players when they get to 17/18/19 for me.

 

Liam Morrison in 2019. Barry Hepburn and Josh Adam last year. That's three 16 year olds we've lost in the last 18 months or so. Harper and Dembele are probably leaving this year as well. It's just not right.

We shouldn't be forcing in youth players for the sake of it, but there's no debate that we simply don't give young players/back ups as much game time as they need or should get. Luca Connell is another one. He had broken into the Bolton team in the 6 months before we signed him back in the summer of 2019. He hasn't played a single minute of senior football, either for us or someone else on loan, in 18 months. What the * is the club playing at?

Our academy is a shambles. Since 2010 we've seen three academy products play regular football for us - Forrest, McGregor and Tierney. That's grim for a club our size.

 

Refuse to give players some game time, this is what happens.

No one is asking for us to start 8 youth players every game, but when the manager is claiming all 4 strikers aren't match fit and guys like Harper can't get a game, what's that really telling the lad?
When Forrest is out long term, as was Mikey and we had no wingers, Harper and Dembele still can't get a minute on the pitch, no wonder they are fed up with the club, have "attitude" issues and look to move on.

It shouldn't have taken to this point for Harper to get his first game time. 13 players out before we was forced in to this.

Our treatment of players is shocking at times.
Sane goes for Turnbull and soro this season it took something drastic to happen before Lennon was basically embarrassed in to playing them.

We should not be accepting that.

Good look young man, and to the rest who will no doubt leave.

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Who can blame him the amount of scumbags who've went in on him on social media this week.
Rat's..

A yank Tim from a big Tim family as well..

Stinks..

 

Another reason why Hammond looks to be losing his job can’t tie out youngsters down


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Have to say aswell Chris mcart has to go


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Did you abuse him mid-week?

 

Although I think it's a shambles we haven't acted sooner if it's a young player we want to keep, if he was up to it then it would be the Premier league clubs or other big clubs in Europe sniffing about. He's american and probably fancies new York as a glamorous place to play professional football and live the life away from the cold of Glasgow.

I do agree with the posts about youngsters not getting much of a chance but we have such a big squad as it is, say the league was tight would you play someone like harper or dembele above Christie or elyonoussi? Non starter for me

 

I specifically said guys probably a decent player was dying for the young guy to do well and can’t be judged on 1 match but it was the Celtic v hibs match thread and as much as I raved about soro and Turnbull on their cracking debut s and granted they weren’t flung into a makeshift team and I’m sure the young guy couldn’t care less on my opinion but no point in lying in that match alone guy looked way out of his depth, few pathetic attempts at a cross brushed aside like a rag doll any time he got the ball and contributed and showed absolutely nothing on that performance alone to think “ he looks a good prospect “, also thought he looked totally overawed and scared by the occasion and maybe let it get the better off him and was trying to hard in saying that we both know Rogic and Mikey Johnson have proven they have talent and he wasn’t any worse than them but you’re right can’t really judge him on 1 game and I really hope he turns it around, but it was a very poor debut, I’m sure he knows that himself

 

Good news, hows about Duffy going to Forest

 

Who was the last youngster to break through? KT?
Maybe says it all about our youth coaching. Plenty of promising kids but none able to make the step up when given the chance. Saying that, he deserves a few more chances before making the call.
Of all the youngsters I have seen glimpse's of, only one I would be anyway confident about would be Luka Connell.
Begs the question, why not give him a shot.

 

I only read half of that bud but I agree..