[2] Due to the suspension of competitive football for the duration of the Second World War, Paton didn't make his first professional appearances for Celtic until the 1947–48 season.
[5] He made 77 appearances and scored 16 goals before a dispute with the club's management over wages led to his departure from Celtic Park in September 1949.
[2] He had contacted London Evening Star columnist (and ex-Arsenal defender) Bernard Joy and asked for an advert to be placed in the paper that he was available for transfer.
[7] A knock suffered in a match versus Southampton on 29 October 1949 hampered his progress, with Paton ruing that he had a "gammy leg" for two years, from which he finally recovered after a successful operation at Brentford hospital.
[3] Paton and Brentford teammate Jimmy Bowie joined Third Division South club Watford in July 1952,[2] to help finance the transfer which had seen Tommy Lawton move to the Bees the previous year.
[11] Paton lamented the standard of football coaching in England in the early 1950s and said "many managers deliberately starved their players of the ball during the week, believing it made them more hungry for it out on the pitch on a Saturday".
[8] Paton and Brentford teammates Ron Greenwood and Jimmy Hill enrolled on the first ever FA coaching course at Lilleshall in the early 1950s.
[2] In the late 1950s, Paton turned his back on football and worked as a press photographer, snooker referee and as a sales rep,[13] selling chocolate biscuits.