If Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers could turn back time would he still sign Jonny Hayes and sell Gary Mackay-Steven?
Celtic’s pursuit of Jonny Hayes made perfect sense at the time.
The former Aberdeen winger scored nine Premiership goals and set up another 12 last season to earn himself a £1.3 million summer switch to boyhood club Celtic.
But has time proven that Hoops boss Brendan Rodgers was wrong to sign him and let Gary Mackay-Steven leave?
Hayes has been ruled out for the rest of the season but even before that the Irishman wasn’t pulling up any trees at Parkhead, bagging one goal and one assist in 16 Premiership games.
On the other hand, Mackay-Steven, who wound up being the 30-year-old’s replacement at Pittodrie, has been reminding the Scottish top flight of his undoubted ability lately.
The 27-year-old scored a stunner in Saturday’s 4-1 Scottish Cup win at Mirren, having also bagged a hat-trick against in-form Hibernian in the league prior to the winter break.
Mackay-Steven only managed eight Premiership games under him at Celtic last season, so offloading him made sense, but in retrospect you wonder if Rodgers regrets not holding on to the former Dundee United man – signed by Ronny Deila in 2015 – instead of getting Hayes.
Evidently Mackay-Steven has bags of ability and perhaps Rodgers, being the man-manager that he is, could have tapped into this eventually and helped him show Celtic fans how good he could really be.
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