Peterborough United chairman Darragh MacAnthony has lifted the lid on Celtic’s interest in his former striker Ivan Toney in the summer of 2020.

The striker is now in the England squad after he eventually moved to Brentford in a £10m deal.

It was a transfer that propelled the London club into the Premier League promised land as Toney’s goals were pivotal to their promotion push.

Celtic were linked with the striker for much of the summer but couldn’t get the deal over the line.

And MacAnthony has given a fascinating insight into negotiations including a foul-mouthed response when it was suggested the player might be picked up for nothing on the infamous cross-border loophole that has seen players like Joe Aribo and Moussa Dembele move for peanuts.

He told Football CFB podcast: “Obviously I don’t want Celtic fans coming after me and hammering me or whatever else.

“Somebody who was with Celtic, who is not there anymore, to do with recruitment went down and met Barry Fry. He came all the way down.

“We knew at that point we were selling Ivan. We had Brentford, we had a few other clubs, we spoke to Premier League clubs, the usual snobbery, ‘Oh, he’s League One, we’re not sure.’ “We knew this kid could play as high as he liked, he’d have scored 50 goals in Scotland with all due respect to the level and because of his physicality and all his attributes.

“The offer was just like, ‘Nah, forget about it, you’re wasting your time and then it was the usual speech which you hear sometimes from clubs that side of the border because they can sign players without compensation. “They say, ‘Well you know, we will just wait until January when he’s six months away from being out of contract and we will sign him then.’ “I was like, ‘listen, f*** off. You either want to buy him or you don’t. And trust me, this boy is a difference-maker. ‘ “Now as it turned out Celtic don’t need Ivan Toney, they have their own way of doing things in their transfer business as you’ve seen with Edouard going to Crystal Palace.

“They pluck good players but obviously they felt that Ivan, a player from League One there was no way they were going to get near the deal we were doing with other clubs. So we left it from there and that was that.”