Incoming Shaw will bring Celtic a £2m talent with excellent attitude
The role likely to be earmarked for Liam Shaw when the 19-year-old joins up at Celtic in the summer isn’t straightforward to divine.
There may be shades of Kristoffer Ajer in that fact, even if a different journey could lie ahead for the Sheffield Wednesday teenager.
Shaw, who agreed a precontract with the Parkhead club this week, has been primarily a central midfielder across his 17 senior outings at Hillsborough.
As an aggressive performer standing at almost 6ft 3ins, he has also been utilised at centre-back since he made his senior breakthrough last July.
So far so Ajer, who arrived at Celtic from Norwegian club Start in the summer of 2006 as a midfielder with the physique to operate in central defence.
Yet, Joe Crann, who covers Sheffield Wednesday for the city’s newspaper The Star, would point to the goal Shaw set up in Wednesday’s FA Cup win at Exeter last month in assessing the value that the youngster can offer in a more advanced berth.
A strike that will tickle Celtic’s support, Shaw picked up the ball 20-yard inside his own half, mazily ran the full rest of the pitch – performing a stop and drag-back en route – before delivering from the byline for Callum Paterson to knock in.
It’s the sort of run Ajer isn’t averse to making in order to break the lines.
“He has a lot of strings to his bow, and that showed them,” said Crann of Shaw yesterday.
“The current manager Neil Thompson has overseen his development right through the ranks and he has talked of playing him in every position through the middle because he can adapt to them.
"With that sort of player, you can get the impression he will be a defensive midfielder, but he’s not that at all.
With the legs and fitness levels he possesses, Thompson has wanted him to be the sort that arrives late in the box.”
Celtic don’t really have an imposing midfielder in their ranks programmed to drive in behind, which would suggest that an Ajer-style conversion wouldn’t necessarily be the most profitable pathway to plot for Shaw.
What they will be getting in the player, Crann is in no doubt, is a bargain; a fee of only around £300,000 likely to head Wednesday’s way as a consequence of the crossborder development fee protocols in place.
“If Celtic had been looking to snap him up when he had just signed a three-year deal with Wednesday, as opposed to him currently being in the closing months of his contract, he would have cost upwards of £2m, I’m sure about that,” he added.
“The fact he has such potential and had come through the club’s ranks as a Wednesday supporter has caused supporters down here to be pretty upset at how everything has worked out.”
Crann is convinced that, however Celtic works out for Shaw, his mentality will be right.
“He is a boy who really applies himself,” he said.
“There is no question over his commitment, and his attitude is spot on.”