Plymouth Argyle could cancel Nadir Ciftci’s loan from Celtic – meaning the striker has only performed at one of the seven clubs he’s been at.
Celtic fans would surely have bitten your hand off in 2015 if you offered them the chance to keep Nadir Ciftci at Parkhead for over two years.
After all, the Scottish champions are used to losing their star players on an annual basis and, if Ciftci fulfilled the vast potential he showed during an excellent spell at Dundee United, speculation would not have been far away tipping the striker to follow the likes of Victor Wanyama and Virgil van Dijk to the Premier League.
The excellent centre-forward who netted 33 goals in two seasons for Dundee United, however, has been nothing other than an expensive flop in Celtic colours. Signing for £1.5 million (Scottish Sun), Ciftci has hardly done the legendary number seven shirt justice. In 26 games, the Turkish striker scored just four times.
And a loan spell at League One Plymouth Argyle, which was supposed to reignite his once promising career, has merely done the opposite. The 26-year-old hasn’t scored a single goal in six League One starts for Plymouth and has not been seen in the league since being dropped by manager Derek Adams following a dire display in a 3-0 home defeat to Doncaster Rovers in September.
If Ciftci looked a disastrous signing for Celtic already, the striker’s ongoing struggles in the third tier of English football merely suggest that he was simply never good enough for a club with such huge expectations.
Ciftci’s two-season spell at Tannadyce certainly looks like an anomalie – especially when you consider that he scored two goals in a combined 40 games for Portsmouth, NAC Breda and Kayserispor before moving to Scotland in 2013.
If there is such a thing as a two-season wonder, Ciftci is exactly that.
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