Out-of-contract Karamoko Dembele looks to be heading for the Celtic exit door after failing to live up to his early Parkhead potential.
The 19-year-old is the most highly-touted player to emerge from Scotland in years but has yet to make his breakthrough into the Parkhead first-team.
The attacker has struggled for game time this season after an injury hampered his pre-season preparation.
A six-month layoff followed an ankle injury picked up against Bristol City, and things quickly changed at Celtic Park in his absence.
The winger faces stiff competition to make his claim for a starting spot having tumbled down the pecking order with the arrival Jota, Daizen Maeda and Liel Abada in the last two transfer windows.
Experienced James Forrest is also going nowhere in a hurry after the Scotland cap penned a new deal, and Mikey Johnston will also hope to make a case for a regular spot in the team in pre-season.
And that's before any new additions arrive with Champions League football just around the corner.
That has left Dembele limited to just two first-team appearances this term – totalling only 20 minutes in his two cameos off the bench against Dundee United and St Mirren in March.
Since then he has mainly made appearances for the colt team as he approaches the end of his deal.
It's a far cry from the potential that was promised as Dembele made his sensational breakthrough at Celtic.
He caught the imagination of Scottish football as a 13-year-old when he played the final nine minutes for the under-20 team – jinking around his older rivals.
A tug of war between Scotland and England youth set ups ensued as both associations looked to win over the next big thing.
In December 2018, he penned his first professional contract at 15 years old with Celtic and would make his first-team debut less than a year later.
To cap off his meteoric rise, Dembele became the youngest player to appear for a Scottish team in Europe when he came off the bench against Cluj in December 2019 aged just 16.
Since then, first-team minutes have been hard to come by.
He made just five appearances under Neil Lennon and John Kennedy during the 2020/21 campaign, but did enough to convince the club to trigger a one year contract extension.
But this time around a similar move from Ange Postecoglou appears unlikely having barely used the teenager this term.
The Australian has played it cool when quizzed on Dembele's future during the season.
He stated following his return from injury: "It's two ways. That'll depend on Karamoko himself and where he sees his future.
"We'll sit down at the appropriate time for him and map out what's best for him; what he thinks is best for him, and we'll come to a decision."
With the days ticking down on his current deal a Karamoko Dembele's Celtic hype train could be about to pull into the station.
