£20m deal: Celtic hit jackpot by selling star who’s now worth millions
£20m deal: Celtic hit jackpot by selling star who’s now worth millions
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers lost one of his top players in the recent summer transfer window when Matt O’Riley completed his exit from Parkhead.
Premier League side Brighton & Hove Albion reportedly splashed out a Scottish transfer record fee of more than £25m to sign the Denmark international.
O’Riley produced 18 goals and 13 assists in the Scottish Premiership during the 2023//24 campaign, which attracted interest from elsewhere and eventually led to him leaving the club.
Rodgers is no stranger to losing some top talents at Parkhead and one player he struck gold with during his first spell at the club was Moussa Dembele.
How much Celtic sold Moussa Dembele for
In the summer of 2018, French side Lyon swooped in to sign the centre-forward from the Hoops for a reported fee of £20m, after he had joined from Fulham for an undisclosed compensation fee in 2016.
Dembele hit the ground running in Glasgow with a sensational debut season for the club. He plundered an eye-catching 32 goals and nine assists in 49 appearances for Rodgers.
His form did suffer, somewhat, in his second campaign at Paradise, though, with a return of 17 goals and nine assists in 39 outings in all competitions.
The French marksman then scored three goals in six games at the start of the 2018/19 season before Lyon secured his services for a staggering £20m fee.
That deal from Celtic has turned out to be a blinder as the 28-year-old marksman’s market value is now millions less than the fee the Scottish giants raked in for his signature.
Moussa Dembele’s current market value
At the time of writing (25/09/2024), Dembele is currently valued at €12m (£10m) by Transfermarkt and this means that his value has halved since his exit from Parkhead.
That is despite his relatively impressive return of 70 goals and 19 assists in 172 matches for Lyon in all competitions during his time with the Ligue 1 club, which included three seasons with at least 15 league goals.
This shows that the French did get plenty of quality out of the centre-forward, as he scored goals on a regular basis for a number of seasons, but they were never able to cash in on him for more than the £20m they spent in 2018.
Dembele went on to struggle in his final campaign with Lyon, scoring three goals in 23 Ligue 1 games during the 2022/23 season, before joining Al-Ettifaq on a free transfer in the summer of 2023.
| 23/24 Pro League | Moussa Dembele |
|---|---|
| Appearances | 25 |
| Goals | 12 |
| Big chances missed | 20 |
| Big chances created | 2 |
| Assists | 1 |
| Stats via Sofascore | |
As you can see in the table above, Dembele endured a mixed campaign with Al-Ettifaq in his first year in the Saudi Pro League last term, with his wasteful finishing.
He scored 12 goals in 25 matches, less than one every other game, and also missed a staggering 20 ‘big chances’, which shows that the forward did not make the most of the quality opportunities that came his way.
Overall, Celtic struck gold by selling him for £20m as the striker has yet to be sold for more than that since and is now valued at half as much, despite being in what should be the prime years of his career at 28.
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