Michael Stewart has revealed he had the chance of a move to Celtic before returning to Hearts for a second spell during his playing days.
The former midfielder had a short loan at his boyhood club from Manchester United, but ended up crossing the Edinburgh divide after that to sign for Hibs.
After two years at Easter Road, he would cross the divide for a second time and re-sign for Hearts.
However, he has now revealed that after he made up his mind that he wanted to leave Hibs in 2007, there was interest from Celtic. The sticking point, though, was that they needed to get Thomas Gravesen and Jiri Jarosik off the wage bill first.
Hearts came in with a concrete offer, and that's where he ended up.
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Speaking on Not Another Football Podcast, the pundit said: “At the end of that season, I knew, obviously. I was like, ‘I wanted to go. There was a few sort of sniffs.
“Gordon [Strachan] was in at Celtic at the time, and John Park, who was at Hibs, had gone to Celtic, and there were a few Hibs boys had gone.
“So there was a wee chance of that, but they were talking they would need to move on Jarosik and Gravesen, so they were off the wage before.
"They were like, ‘If you can hang about and wait’… in between that, Hearts had come back in, and I felt like, ‘I want to go back.’
“I felt like I had unfinished business, and I wanted to go back, so I decided to go back to Hearts."
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