Filip Benkovic spent the whole of last season on loan to Celtic.
According to one Championship manager, Celtic had no chance of signing one of their alleged January targets.
Celtic were one of several clubs credited with an interest in their former loan star Filip Benkovic throughout the window (Northern Echo and others).
But the £13 million Leicester City defender ended it on loan to Bristol City.
And discussing his recent recruits with Bristol Live earlier this week, the Robins boss Lee Johnson claimed: “I think Benkovic was an important one. At the start of the window when we secured a verbal on him, that if he was available he was coming to us, we had circumstances going into that.
“We had three or four losses on the spin, [Nathan] Baker had come off a couple of times with knocks and we weren’t quite sure how those knocks were going to settle.
“[Tomas] Kalas was still 4-5 weeks away from coming back, Taylor Moore – a young centre-half who we believe [the loan to Blackpool] is the right stepping stone to go and get him games.
“To commit to that strong back line is really important because to go back to spells where we’ve struggled it’s often when the backline is disrupted or hasn’t got the quality, or indeed height.”
How interested Celtic were in Benkovic remains to be seen, of course.
The Croatian and Dedryck Boyata were replaced in the summer by Christopher Jullien and Hatem Abd Elhamed.
And his position was certainly not one of primary concern even as January progressed.
Celtic did deals for Patryck Klimala and the midfielder Ismaila Soro last month and managed to keep hold of all of their key players.
Given some of those coming to the end of their contracts this summer, the Bhoys are likely to prioritise new goalkeepers, full-backs and wingers ahead of the new season.
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