RYAN CHRISTIE has suggested his eventual Bournemouth move was meant to be after deciding to join Celtic despite interest from the Cherries in 2015.

Scotland international Christie made the move to Bournemouth last summer and helped Scott Parker's side earn promotion to the Premier League.

It was a dream debut season for his new club - but had things gone differently 'seven or eight years ago' Christie could've been lining up in red and black for a number of seasons already.

Christie burst onto the scene with Inverness and quickly gained admirers from England with Bournemouth making an offer early into his career.

The creative midfielder was invited to tour the facilities ahead of a possible move - but he rejected the offer to seek more game time at ICT before any transfer discussion.

Christie excelled in the Highlands and in 2015 made the move to Celtic where he would enjoy a trophy-laden spell after loans at Inverness and Aberdeen.

Speaking to the Bournemouth Daily Echo, Christie recalled: “I was very young, just kind of starting out with Inverness. I think I had made a handful of appearances for the first team.

“I wasn’t really told that much about it. I was still pretty young and just concentrating on my football.

“My dad kind of said they had put an offer in to Inverness and I was invited down to see the training ground and setup and everything.

“But at that point, I had barely started playing for Inverness. It was my boyhood club and I just wanted to make a mark with Inverness basically, before I looked elsewhere.

“I said no at the time and stayed to play some first-team football, get my feet into football properly.

“Even from little things like that, you just feel you have a bit of an affiliation with a club moving forward and over seven or eight years down the line – here we are.

“It was nice when I signed and a few people from up top brought that up and said ‘seven years later but we finally got it over the line’.

“So, it’s nice, it kind of makes it feel like it was meant to be a little bit.”