Asked to move office in the first week of the Brendan Rodgers era, David Moss quickly recognised that resistence was futile. Celtic's tectonic plates were shifting and the club scouts faced a subconscious choice. A new desk or a new club.

'When Brendan came I was one of the Celtic scouts housed in the big office at Lennoxtown above the media room,' he tells Sportsmail.

'There were six of us in there.

Moussa Dembele was a snip for Celtic when he arrived for £400,000 in summer of 2016

'That's the best office at the training ground. It overlooks everything.

'But Brendan came for the tour he came in and you could see him thinking, "I like the look of this..."

'He took it over for his office. The scouts were kicked out.

'But for me that's not a problem; it's precisely how it should be. The manager is and always has been the most important man at a football club.'

Rodgers arrived at the end of season 2015/16 to find a football club stuck in a damaging rut.

The Ronny Deila appointment hadn't worked.

The players lacked fitness and motivation. The creep of supporter indifference was reflected in banks of empty seats at home league games.

Engaged in a lengthy game of cat and mouse with Fulham's Moussa Dembele challenging circumstances made the job of luring the young striker to Glasgow a challenge.

After Stefan Scepovic, John Guidetti, Mo Bangura and Nadir Ciftci Scotland's champions needed a sure thing. Previously head of scouting for the youth academy Moss had been watching the Frenchman's progress in under-18 games and suspected he'd found one.

'I looked at Moussa and saw a natural goalscorer.

'I met with his agent Mamadi Fofana in a big London hotel next to Kings Cross Station six months or so before Brendan came in.

Celtic scout David Moss played a key part in bringing Dembele to Celtic last year

'I said to him, 'look, I know you will have other clubs and can get a bigger salary elsewhere - but there's a high potential he could go to one of those clubs and be a substitute.

'Celtic might not pay him as much, you might not get the same commission, but he will play lots of games, get lots of chances and play Champions League football. We will show him to the world and after one year, two years maximum, we will sell him hopefully for maximum money.'

'It was a win for Moussa because he had a development plan.

'It was a win for the agent because he made some money.

'And it was a win for Celtic because we got a great player with the potential for a huge transfer fee.'

Top level transfers rarely just happen; they evolve over a period of time. Aware Dembele had no plans to sign a new contract at Fulham, Moss began the seduction early, stopping just short of chocolates and flowers.

'We kept in contact every single week,' he recalls, 'that was the key to everything.

'I would go on and ask, 'Is Moussa playing?'

'And Momadi would say to me, 'don't waste your time coming this week David, he' s not playing.

'If you are diligent and good at your job you realise that good players with the potential of a Moussa don't come along very often.

'To get them you have to do something different. You have to go the extra mile.

'I was acting for Celtic Football Club, a Rolls Royce of a football club, and if you ask Mamadi he will tell you I did things right.

'Everybody looked. Not everybody saw the full potential of Moussa.'

The reluctance of England's top clubs to take a punt on Dembele's explosive talent will eventually cost one of their number a substantial sum of money.

In the summer of 2016 they could have had him for £4million or £5million, subject to a tribunal. A loophole in cross border transfer regulations meant Celtic could snap him up for £400,000 and use the difference to pay a generous wage.

With a fair wind and good fortune Moss suspects his former club will now sell him this summer for a fee approaching £30million.

'Every single club in the Barclays Premier League watched Moussa,' he adds.

'A few said, 'nah, he's lazy, he doesn't do this, he doesn't do that.'

'But I had watched him from a young age - I knew what he could do.

'The other advantage Celtic had was that Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal were not going to take Moussa Dembele as their number one striker.

'They would have been taking him as a £5million gamble.

'Mamadi was a clever agent who saw that if he came to Celtic he wouldn't command a huge transfer fee, but it would be a lot more in terms of an agent's fee than we would normally pay.

'Nevertheless, without Brendan coming in it would never have happened.'

It's no stretch or slight to suggest that Dembele wouldn't have signed for Ronny Deila.

Brendan Rodgers was key in luring Dembele to Celtic where he has excelled

Rodgers proved a game changer the day he walked into a London hotel exuding an air of Premier League gravitas rarely detectable in managers of Scottish football clubs.

'Brendan came in and he raised everything,' claims Moss.

'Honestly, if I'm in charge of Arsenal now and Arsene Wenger goes I wouldn't even look at anyone else.

'He could manage any club in the Barclays Premier League and it wouldn't faze him one bit.

'Dermot (Desmond) and Peter (Lawwell) are realistic.

'They know they will be lucky to hold on to him at the end of this season.

'And that will only be because he hadn't been offered a really top job.

'He's not going to leave Celtic unless it's an Arsenal or a Chelsea or a Man United on the phone.

'Tottenham, maybe, but he turned that down in the past.

'He's not going to leave Celtic for a West Ham or an Everton or Southampton or anything like that.

'Why would you leave Celtic for one of those jobs?'

It falls upon Sportsmail here to interject. To remind Moss that he himself left Celtic to become Huddersfield Town's Head of Football Operations last June.

Accepting the point, he laughs as he recalls the circumstances of the move.

'I said to Brendan I had been offered a position as sporting director of Huddersfield and he said, 'David, you're too good, you need to go.

'He said to me I couldn't do that at Celtic because they didn't have that structure.

'Brendan is in charge. And Peter Lawwell does the negotiations.

'In England most clubs are going down the sporting director road and it's a role I feel I'm best at. The one where I feel I can make a difference.'

A masters degree in sports directorship wasn't enough to make it work. Leaving the Yorkshire club shortly after a historic win over Manchester United the former Falkirk and Dunfermline midfielder is now talking to an overseas club about recreating the model he helped to hone during seven years of fluctuating fortunes at Celtic.

'Before Brendan the parameters were very tight,' he admits.

'Football was changing fast with the money in the Barclays Premier League and every year Celtic were slipping and slipping. Going backwards, backwards.

'I dread to think what would have happened if Brendan hadn't come in - the fans were becoming restless.

'Brendan saved the day by giving the club impetus very few could given it.

'He had that Premier League experience and mentality and imported it to Celtic.

'Nothing against Ronny Deila, I had a great relationship with him.

'But he came from a tiny club in a tiny country and Celtic was too big for him.

'He didn't have the expertise or experience to manage a huge juggernaut of a football club.

'He was a good person, he just didn't have Brendan's kudos or x-factor.'

The x-factor was key to taking Dembele in the end. Moss did much of the leg-work, the financial detail proving challenging until Rodgers arrived and pushed the deal over the line.

'Other managers might not have been able to get Celtic's board to accept it.

'But I always felt Celtic had the potential to be a Benfica or a Porto, with the transfer

revenues of those clubs. And Brendan saw that.

'Listen, Celtic have done well making something like £75million from transfers.

'But a club which is completely switched on can be making £300million or £400million.'

Rodgers speaks often of a new approach. Of Celtic commanding the market rate and refusing to allow English clubs to treat Scottish football like a car boot sale on a Sunday morning.

Moss took a call from Everton in the summer asking if Dembele was worth the £30million price-tag on his head. For Celtic what happens with the striker this summer could be key to shattering the glass ceiling suffocating Scottish clubs.

'When Celtic sold Wanyama, van Dijk, fraser Forster and thought £11million or £12million was unbelievable money,' adds Moss.

'But Brendan came in and said, 'look I know what the market is.'

'If Benfica or Porto or Dinamo Zagreb, even Basle, can sell players for tens of millions of pounds you have to ask, 'what's the difference between them and Celtic? There isn't one.

'Brendan joined Celtic and introduced Premier League thinking. He can talk the talk. The important thing is that he walks the walk as well.

'If Celtic get another two or three seasons out of him they will have won a watch.'