Aston Villa captain John McGinn: I almost joined Celtic

John McGinn has revealed he was expecting to join Celtic in 2018 but the move did not materialise because the Glasgow club dragged their heels.

Brendan Rodgers wanted to take McGinn to Celtic Park from Hibernian, but a bid never came and the Scotland international ended up joining Aston Villa for less than £3million.

McGinn’s grandfather Jack was Celtic chairman in the 1990s and the Villa captain believes his association with the club meant they thought his transfer would be a formality.

“I think the irony is if he (Jack McGinn) wasn’t my grandpa and I wasn’t a Celtic fan, I probably would be a Celtic player,” he said on The Overlap podcast.

“I think they felt because I was a Celtic fan, it would just happen, nobody else would come in and Hibs would crumble.

“But Hibs were amazing at the time. They said, ‘we’re not going to stand in your way, we know you want to be a Celtic player, but they need to pay us what you’re worth’. So I gave them my word that, ‘alright, that’s fine, you won’t stand in my way, but I’ll wait until they pay what I’m worth’, and it never ever got there.

“They’ve done that with quite a few players. I think if I wasn’t Scottish, if I wasn’t a Celtic fan, if they thought a team would come in, they probably would have just done it.

“But I don’t think they believed my agent at the time when he said, if Villa get a takeover, they’re coming in. I think they thought it was a bluff for more money or something like that.

“I couldn’t quite understand (why it didn’t happen) because I was chomping at the bit to come and compete there.”

Villa were in the Championship when they signed McGinn, but he has spearheaded a revival that has seen them win the Europa League and qualify for the Champions League in two of the last three years

“Steve Bruce called and said, ‘get on a flight, we’ve agreed a fee’. They pushed the boat out, made an effort,” he said.

“It was as if I felt like they really wanted me. They opened Villa Park at night, they said, they know I’ve got a big family, they said, here’s box number seven, number seven jersey, you’re the man we want and that was it.”