Celtic have cashed in on a number of players over the past few years such as Odsonne Edouard, Kristoffer Ajer, Moussa Dembele and Kieran Tierney, to name but a few.
One other player that the Hoops sold in recent memory but they may now be regretting is full-back Jeremie Frimpong, who moved to Bayer Leverkusen in January 2021 in a deal worth a reported £11.5m.
After joining from Manchester City’s youth ranks in 2019, the defender went on to make 51 appearances for the Hoops across all competitions, scoring three goals and providing eight assists along the way.
Since moving to Germany, the 21-year-old – who is currently picking up £25k-per-week according to Salary Sport – has racked up 47 appearances for Leverkusen in total, finding the back of the net twice and delivering nine assists in the process.
With 25 Bundesliga appearances under his belt this season, the right-back has scored one goal and set up another six, earning himself an overall performance rating of 6.88/10 from WhoScored. That makes him Leverkusen’s sixth-highest rated outfield player, showing how important a figure he is for his current club.
To highlight just how much of an attacking threat he has been this term, no other Leverkusen defender has made more key passes per game (1.2) than the former Hoops youngster, who also has his team’s joint-second highest number of dribbles per game (1.9).
In January 2021, shortly before calling an end to his Celtic career, Transfermarkt had Frimpong’s market value listed as £3.6m. It now stands at a massive £18m, highlighting a significant increase of 400%, which shows just how much of a boost his career has enjoyed since waving goodbye to the Parkhead club.
This current value would comfortably make him Celtic’s most valuable player, eclipsing Callum McGregor’s current value of £6.75m at the top of the tree. Taking all this into account, it’s safe to say that the Hoops lost a valuable asset when they sold Frimpong.
However, with the player reportedly adamant that he wanted to leave the club, perhaps they should have done more to try and convince him to stay where he was, even if they still managed to accrue a decent transfer fee for him.
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