Remembering Luca Connell's controversial exit from Bolton Wanderers to Celtic

Had the environment been more conducive to nurturing young talent when the Liverpudlian midfielder was fast-tracked into the senior ranks by Phil Parkinson in early 2019, it would have been easy to see him lead the Bolton midfield for years to come.

There was something instantly different about the fresh-faced midfielder when ran out for a fleeting moment to replace veteran Gary O’Neill in an FA Cup third round victory against Walsall, nearly four months short of his 18th birthday.

Perhaps it was the shaggy hair, the assuredness of touch or maybe that the Liverpudlian was one of the few players whose aura had been unaffected by the nefarious reign of Ken Anderson, by that stage in complete freefall.

Wanderers were stripped of so many resources in those desperate months, leading to – but not ending with – administration in May 2019.

Unpaid senior players had lost any form of motivation, strikes were called, games cancelled, ills racked up and stock was reclaimed from the club shop, and then then ultimate ignominy as the Community Trust (as then called) was forced to open a foodbank to ensure staff did not go hungry.

All this happened less than three-and-a-half years ago, and Connell may return with Barnsley on Saturday and struggle to recognise the misery he left behind.

Camerasport (Image: Camerasport)

It was against that grim backdrop that the midfielder, along with other young guns like Harry Brockbank, Joe Pritchard, Ronan Darcy and Connor Hall, gave some semblance of hope to supporters, already resigned to relegation from the Championship that year.

Administration had been anticipated, almost relished, as fans longed for Anderson to finally sever ties. But few anticipated how difficult that summer would become, and how close the club would come to falling over the financial cliff altogether.

Bolton actually carried a squad of a dozen senior players into the 2019/20 season, although the longer the club sale stalled, the shorter that list became.

Erhun Oztumer, Sammy Ameobi and Pawel Olkowski took legal action to have their contracts annulled for non-payment, Josh Magennis also eventually using the situation to lever a Deadline Day move to Hull City. Even though Connell had played a dozen senior games the season before, he was still a third-year scholar. Fans clamoured for administrators to offer him a professional contract – something which would have been practically impossible at the time due to the constraints of the EFL embargo in place – so with Bolton looking so vulnerable, the vultures began to circle.

Interest in the midfielder was no new revelation. From the age of nine he had caught the eye in the academy, with Merseyside giants Liverpool and Everton always making their admiration known.

Once he broke into the first team the list of suitors expanded to include Glasgow Rangers, Southampton, Wolves, Sunderland and Tottenham.

But it would be Glasgow Celtic who eventually made the move for a youngster who had now been selected in a senior Republic of Ireland squad and engineering a move which still leaves a sour taste in the mouth of some fans to this day.

At first administrators blocked the move, or at least that was the indication they gave at the start of a confusing week at the end of June 2019.

The player’s representatives had given a 14-day notice to terminate his scholarship contract, but though the club thought they were on solid legal ground to block him moving elsewhere in the Football League, they were unable to prevent him moving North of the Border. Worse still, Celtic were only obliged to pay roughly £250,000 for his services.

A late flurry of negotiations secured an extra £100,000 – the Hoops potentially not wanting to come over too predatory in the Bolton’s desperate state. But the fee was a drop in the ocean compared with what was being haemorrhaged and was certainly nothing compared to the nine years of work put in by coaching staff at the academy to take him to that point.

Few could dispute Celtic’s draw but like Rob Holding a few years earlier, it was difficult to shake-off the feeling that he had been undersold.

The move proved anything but a dream, however, and while Connell did feature regularly in Celtic’s Under-23s, his international ambitions ground to a halt without regular first-class football.

It was not until a pair of loan moves to Queen’s Park in 2021/22, the second of which was spent alongside his old Bolton mate Ronan Darcy, that his career began to get moving in the right direction again.

Released in the summer, Connell moved back to England with Barnsley, where despite injury problems this season he has already claimed three assists for Michael Duff’s side.

Teenage looks hardened by the Scottish winters, hair now cropped in a not un-McAteer-like shorter style, Connell may always be a case of ‘what might have been’ for Wanderers, or at least a reminder of how bad ownership can lay a club ripe for the pickings.

PA (Image: PA)