Manchester City defender Jason Denayer, 19, has joined Celtic on a one-year loan.
Denayer has joined the Scottish champions at the same time as Aston Villa’s Bulgarian winger Aleksander Tonev, who is believed to have joined on similar terms.
The highly-rated Belgian youngster had featured in City’s pre-season tour of America and will now gain valuable experience of first team football which could help him make the breakthrough into City’s first team in the future.
Denayer could find himself playing Champions League football against Maribor of Slovenia next week following news that Celtic were reinstated in the Champions League after Legia Warsaw fielded an ineligible player during the second leg of their 6-1 aggregate defeat of Celtic.
Legia midfielder Bartosz Bereszynski was deemed ineligible after it emerged that he was not registered to play against St Patricks Athletic in their previous round during which Legia assumed he was serving a three match European ban.
Bereszynski did not appear in Celtic’s 4-1 first leg defeat but came on as a late substitute during Legia’s 2-0 second leg win.
A post-match investigation found that Bereszynski had not officially begun to serve his European ban as he had accidentally not been registered in the Legia squad to play against St Patrick’s Athletic.
As a result of the administrative error, Celtic were awarded a 3-0 “walkover win” and subsequently progressed to the next round in place of Legia 4-4 on away goals.
Legia Warsaw stated their intent to appeal and had also published an open letter requesting that Celtic “meet” them in a one off tie in either Warsaw or Glasgow to decide the outcome of the Champions League tie but Celtic’s response on their official website was terse:
“We are disappointed by Legia Warsaw’s comments. This is entirely a matter for UEFA and its processes. Accordingly, we will reserve further comment for the appropriate time.” said the statement.
Celtic manager Ronny Deila admitted he felt “very sorry” for Legia Warsaw but said that Celtic were not involved in the decision to punish the Polish team for their mistake.
Legia will now face Kazakhstani club Aktobe in the Europa League play-off round.