Former Wanderers boss Owen Coyle has explained his decision to let Aaron Mooy leave the club in 2010.

The midfielder spent several years in the Whites’ youth ranks and was even compared to French legend Zinedine Zidane by Peter Farrell.

However, he left to join Scottish club St Mirren and also had a spell in Australia before returning to English football.

The 31-year-old has now signed for Scottish champions Celtic following a spell in Chine with Shanghai Port.

“When he was at Bolton he was a No 10 and we had to impress upon him he needed to work a bit harder,” Coyle told The Scottish Sun.

“Nobody ever doubted his ability on the ball, he just needed to do more when he wasn’t in possession.

“Him and Michael O’Halloran, who was in our youth system, were good pals at Bolton and the pair of them were real talents. I was always keen to give young players their chance and I gave Michael his debut.

“But the difficulty was we had Johan Elmander, Martin Petrov and Lee Chung-Yong in the side, so opportunities were difficult to come by.

“Aaron’s contract came to an end and we’d have liked him to stay but his agent wanted him to go somewhere he’d play.

“We reluctantly agreed to let him go. There was talk of a move to Holland but I rang Danny (Lennon) and told him about Aaron, what his attributes were, and he signed him.”

Celtic clinched the league title last season and Coyle reckons Mooy will turn out to be a shrewd signing for the Hoops in the coming months.

He added: “He was one of those boys that you always felt would have a good career in the game. But it was a case where he had the talent and maybe the penny dropped when he went back to Australia.

“He went to St Mirren and did OK but maybe it was when he found himself back there he realised how hard he needed to work if he was going to have a good career at the top level.

“Ability will take you so far but, once he worked on the industry of his game, he was able to move to another level. He probably matured a bit and all credit to him for that.”