Celtic are preparing for a battle between two relegated Premier League sides to sign their winger Mikey Johnston before the end of the transfer window.
The Ireland international has never got going at Celtic and the Scottish champions are reportedly looking to offload the winger with Championship sides Burnley and Sheffield United battling it out to sign Johnston.
Johnston’s career to date
Johnston was born in Glasgow and progressed through the Celtic youth teams before making his debut for the first team in 2017. He’s had a fairly stop-start career with Celtic, making a total of 93 appearances in the past seven years, scoring 13 goals.
Johnston had a loan spell in Portugal with Vitória de Guimarães during the 2022-23 season before joining West Bromwich Albion for the second half of the 2023-24 season.
Despite being born in Scotland and representing their youth teams, the 25 year old plays for Ireland at international level after being eligible to play through his grandfather. Since his debut in 2023, Johnston has made 11 appearances and scored two goals.
His performances for West Brom last season will fill Burnley and Sheffield United with confidence that, whichever side wins his signature, will have a player who can make an impact within their side.
What was Johnston’s impact on West Brom last season?
Despite not hitting the heights that may have been expected for him at Celtic, there is undoubtedly a talented player which his former manager Ange Postecoglou highlighted:
“There’s definitely a talented footballer there, but sometimes you just need a different environment to help that happen”.
That different environment could be the Championship as during his time in the division last season, Johnston played 18 matches and scored seven goals. His goals came from an expected goals total of 3.0 xG which shows his ability to score from difficult positions with one of his goals coming against Queens Park Rangers being scored from an xG figure of 0.01.
The 25 year old’s favoured position is on the left-hand side of an attack but is versatile and can play on the right hand side if need be. Johnston’s strength is his close ball control and dribbling ability which was shown during his loan spell at West Brom.
Johnston completed an average of 2.99 successful dribbles per 90 minutes with a 59.1% success rate which shows the number of times he backed himself to take his opponent on. Coupled with this is the end-product that the winger provides. His stats last season show that he provided 1.23 successful crosses and had 1.76 shots on average (with a 70% shot accuracy) per 90 minutes.
West Brom’s manager, Carlos Corberan, emphasied the quality and impact that Johnston had on his side last season:
“Johnston is one player who is very special for us because he has the skill to help the team in building attacks and the skill to help in finishing off attacks”.
Why are Burnley and Sheffield United chasing his signature?
Both Burnley and Sheffield United play wingers in 4-4-2 and 4-4-1-1 formations so Johnston would be able to compete for his favoured left-wing position.
Sheffield United have strengthened well so far this window with the likes of Kieffer Moore and Callum O’Hare and would be adding more Championship quality should they sign Johnston.
Burnley are keen to add the Celtic winger having seen attacking players Wilson Odobert, Scott Twine and Sander Berge depart the club in the last week.