Dunfermline boss John Potter has revealed how a conversation about his own experiences helped convince Paul George on a move to East End Park.
The Pars manager made the former Celtic youth his latest signing earlier this week and is himself proof that there is life after Parkhead, having started his own career with the Hoops as a teenager.
Now he hopes that 21-year-old midfielder George can continue his development in Fife after his release by Celtic in January of this year.
“I spoke to him and had that very chat with him,” Potter told Courier Sport.
“I told him I had been in the same position as him, I had been at Celtic for three or four years until I was 19 or 20.
“Then you have to take a step back.
“In my situation I stepped back to Dunfermline and then had to step back again to get started.
“At some point you have to start a first-team career.
“I had the same conversation with Ross Drummond here.
“You’ve got to go and start a career at some point, it doesn’t matter at what level.
“I’ve told him there’s an opportunity here for him to go and play 14 or 15 games, to get in amongst a first-team squad and just start playing.
“It’s totally different to playing under-20s football on a Tuesday night.
“There are more pressures involved, but I think he’ll thrive on it.
“I’ve told him that he could probably have gone to other clubs and played under-20s football and got the odd first-team game between now and the end of the season.
“But I told him it would be better for him to come here and challenge for a first-team place, and he was delighted to come in.
“I was delighted the board supported me in getting Paul in.
“There have been five players left, which gave us a bit of money to try and strengthen, so Paul coming in was the fifth. But I had to go and ask the board to make sure it was all okay.
“They were great, they were really positive, and I’m thankful they let me do it.”
Potter added that he was especially delighted to secure the player’s signature after Premiership Motherwell showed an interest by taking the winger on a fortnight’s trial.
“He went there for two weeks and they didn’t know what they wanted to do and kept him hanging on,” he continued.
“But I kept in contact with him and as soon as he was done I asked him in here for a couple of days’ training.
“He played in the Fife Cup against Cowdenbeath, which he didn’t have to do, because he could have got himself injured or done something crazy.
“So, his attitude has been first-class since he came in.
“He’ll excite the crowd, he’s good in one-on-one situations and he’s just something that we’ve been missing.
“There’s a lot of work to do with him, he’s probably not as fit as he could be, but we’ll get that up to scratch.
“But he’s a player that will excite people.”
Potter revealed that he hopes to a get a loan deal for another striker tied up over the coming days, although that is unlikely to be before tomorrow’s game against Stenhousemuir.
Fresh from his first win as manager, the Pars boss is determined to continue to build some momentum in the promotion race with a second successive victory.
He added: “We’ve had tight games against them and in the game over there we were really poor.
“They’ve obviously had a wee change of manager, so it’s difficult to know what to expect.
“Brown Ferguson did well when he was in charge for four or five games before, and they had a very good record and scored lots of goals.
“So it will be a difficult game, but I’m going to concentrate on us this week and hopefully we can pick up from what we did two weeks ago.
“We’ve had a good couple of weeks’ training, with three or four under-20s and reserve games, with a lot of people getting football.
“I’ve made the point that if want to climb the league there’s no point in looking everybody else’s results – we’ve got to start winning.
“We managed to do that a couple of weeks ago and it’s up to build on that and start getting more wins.”