Celtic FC will have been shocked to see Middlesbrough, Millwall contracts terminated | OneFootball

Scott McDonald scored plenty of goals during his time with Celtic, so seeing his contract be ripped up with Boro and Millwall will've been a shock.

Gordon Strachan paid Celtic £3.5m to bring Australian international striker Scott McDonald to Middlesbrough on transfer Deadline Day of January 2010, and his time on Teesside would go down as a successful failure.

McDonald was signed by Strachan for Celtic in 2007, and he would work under the Scottish footballing icon during his time with the Glasgow giants between 2007-09, before he took the Middlesbrough job.

Strachan's move to the Riverside Stadium was one of the main motivations for McDonald when choosing to join Boro, as he would follow his former boss to the North East a matter of months later, for a reported fee of £3.5m.

However, the Australian's time in English football didn't go to plan, as he saw his contract terminated first by Middlesbrough, and then by Millwall, before returning to Scottish football with Motherwell in 2015.

Seeing his career take these drastic turns would have come as a major shock to those associated with Celtic, as he enjoyed a highly fruitful spell with the Hoops for two-and-a-half years.

McDonald was prolific during his time with Celtic

When a striker leaves a club after enjoying a goal-laden spell with that team to sign for another, there's always that expectation that the player will continue to enjoy success with their next venture.

So, after scoring 59 goals in 121 appearances for Celtic between March 2007-January 2010, in a spell that included a Scottish Premiership title win in 2007/08 and a League Cup triumph in 2008/09, Hoops supporters will have been confident that he'd go on to replicate that form for Middlesbrough.

After all, he'd been crowned top scorer in the two full seasons he was at Celtic Park, bagging 25 league goals in the 2007/08 season, before registering 16 in the 2008/09 campaign respectively.

On top of that, he'd be linking back up with Strachan, a manager who he'd thrived under during his time with the club.

Middlesbrough spell brought goals

He got caught in transitional period under Mowbray

After Strachan had departed for Middlesbrough in the summer of 2009, McDonald played the first half of the 2009/10 season at Celtic under new manager, Tony Mowbray.

Revealing in a 2020 interview with Teesside Live, McDonald spoke about his relationship with both coaches. He said: "I just didn't feel like he believed in me (Mowbray), I didn't feel like I had his 100% backing, some things were going on, I started to not play games even though I was still top scorer.

"It just wasn't happening between the two of us. Gordon had been so impressionable on me. I was playing out of my skin. He had everything to do with that in how he made me feel.

"He was like a father figure to me and when he got the job at Middlesbrough he didn't have to convince me, along with a club of Middlesbrough's size. Just coming down and knowing financially they were in a position to have a really good go."

Evidently then, Strachan had played a major role in McDonald's performances on the pitch at Celtic, and so when he tore up his Middlesbrough contract in October 2010 after a poor start to the season, the striker must've already began questioning whether he'd made the right move.

"We were all shocked. We (Strachan's signings) felt a little bit disappointed, we felt we were left on our own a little bit, all of a sudden he's gone," he said. "I was still living at Hurworth at the time and Gordon was two down from me. I saw Sky Sports News and thought 'my god, he's gone'. I went to his door and said 'what the hell is going on?'.

"He said, 'it's one of those things, I don't think I can turn it around'. And he told me he thinks Tony (Mowbray) is coming in. I was like 'oh my god, you have to be kidding me, how is your Donald Duck!'.

Mowbray did indeed come in to replace Strachan, and after being skeptical at first, McDonald would admit in that Teesside Live interview that the Boro boss grew on him, and he ended up having a lot of respect for him.

Come the winter window of 2013, Middlesbrough wanted to ease their wage bill concerns, and being one of the top earners at the time, McDonald was pushed towards the exit door. The two parties agreed to terminate his contract despite having another year remaining on his deal at the Riverside.

McDonald would score 39 times in 124 appearances for Boro, registering double-digit scoring seasons in all competitions in both the 2010/11 season (14) and the 2012/13 season (13) respectively.

Unfortunately for him, he got caught in a major transitional period for the club, with many players coming and going, and that lack of stability was no doubt a major part as to why his time on Teesside didn't go to plan.

Not wanting to give up on his time in English football just yet, McDonald signed a two-year contract with fellow Championship side Millwall in the summer of 2013.

However, if his time at Middlesbrough didn't go to plan, then his spell with the Lions was nothing short of a disaster.

Just three goals in 34 total appearances during his debut 2013/14 season at The Den, before registering two goals and four assists in 24 Championship appearances during the first half of the 2014/15 campaign.

So, come January 2015, and with months still remaining on his contract, McDonald must've felt a sense of déjà vu when Millwall boss Ian Holloway informed him that he was not in his plans for the second half of the season.

Therefore, in the exact same fashion that his Middlesbrough career had come to an end previously, he and the club agreed to a mutual termination of his contract at the halfway point of the season.

Just six goals in 60 appearances for Millwall is not the sort of goal tally he'd have expected to leave the club with, nor would Celtic supporters have envisioned his career following the path it did after his departure in 2010.