Just in: One key Celtic player has avoided contract talks.

You may have noticed that Celtic are carrying out a fair bit of positive contract work at present.

At this stage, it may well be easier to go through the Hoops stars who haven’t been furnished with a new deal over the past few months.

Callum McGregor, Kyogo Furuhashi, Daizen Maeda, Liel Abada and Anthony Ralston have all extended their stays in Glasgow recently, while Reo Hatate and Matt O’Riley seem likely to join them in the coming weeks.

Talk about a number of other players — namely Joe Hart and David Turnbull — has also made it to press conference since Brendan Rodgers took over. Strangely, one key Celtic star has managed to escape all of the new contract discussion.

In terms of indispensability, they don’t come much bigger than Cameron Carter-Vickers. The American defender, sidelined since mid-August, has been a colossus for us over the past two seasons. Many supporters would tell you that he’s the team’s most important player.

Carter-Vickers signed a four-year deal when he completed his permanent move from Tottenham Hotspur in 2022 (Celtic). That ties him down until the summer of 2026 — the same expiry date as Hatate and O’Riley, as well as Abada and McGregor before their recent extensions.

If those players were all on the club’s radar then surely CCV must be too. It’s a little strange then that we haven’t had any reports about the defender at all. Seriously, search ‘Cameron Carter-Vickers new Celtic contract’ and you’ll see nothing other than news of his transfer in 2022.

As fans, we can take hope from the fact that deals for McGregor, Kyogo, Maeda and Ralston came completely out of the blue. Maybe the club are just waiting for CCV to return from injury before they unload the good news on us. What a thought, eh?