News that Fraser Forster has signed a long term contract with Celtic, who will pay Newcastle United £2m for his services, adds some welcome stability ahead of the Champions League qualifiers. Buying a new, first-choice, keeper is fraught with the kind of difficulties Neil Lennon would rather avoid.
Last summer we looked at Croatian international Stipe Pletikosa, who performed at the European Championships, but he failed to impress during his trial period at Celtic, including a poor performance against Wolves at Celtic Park.
Last year we also looked at Polish cap, Gregorz Sandomierski, who subsequently went to Belgian club racing Genk for €3m, but he failed to make a competitive appearance for Genk and was shipped back to Poland on loan. By comparison, Forster, who turned 24 on St Patrick’s Day, cemented his place with the champions.
Last year Celtic concluded a provisional deal with Newcastle to sign Fraser on a permanent deal this summer but although player and club were both keen to do business, negotiations took until the end of the players’ summer break, perhaps reflecting a tightening of Celtic’s finances ahead of what could be a period of financial uncertainty in the Scottish game.
982 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- ...
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- »
Passed The Rosevale on my way home tonight.
Huge “12” in two of their windows.
Is that a twelth man thing, or just nostalgia about the time they thought they were club 12?
Oh,the yellow press in Scotia,it’s like comics from the 60′s ; I keep waitin’ for Dan Dare to appear in his space-rocket over Ibrox,Roy of The Rovers to sign for Club12 (or whatever it’s called),Bomber Brown to make drunken Churchillian speeches on the steps of The Reichstag…..wait,wait,that actually happened. I’d better see a doctor : fantasy and reality are getting mixed up in my wee head.
I’ll pick up that poor Mr. Green on the way.
Doh!
Dull brain seeing though a haze of green.
It’s almost the 12th of July.
I might pop in for a pint….
ST
Having watched Spain are you rethinking the need for a big CF? :)
Find myself on the shores of Sebago Lake in Maine in the run up to Independence Day.
Aye, ironic that rehearsal fireworks are going off here as well as back in Scotland. I find myself reading with an incredulous morbid fascination what is happening to Scottish Football (and its reputation). It is beyond absurd.
It is highly revealing when myopic authorities and the MSM, hand in hand, continue to prolong this debacle, a farce which has reduced themselves and their product as a sham and the antithesis of sport. But these ‘leaders’ of the national sport, and national public opinion cannot see how they appear. Their arrogance/denial is breathtaking.
It has been said that absolute power corrupts absolutely?
Indeed. The proof of that concept is in front of our eyes.
It’s not enormously embarrassing.
It’s beyond that.
Unless i am being stupid i cant see how Celtic will suffer financially when there will be almost cast iron certainty CL money for foreseeable…..loss of ranjurs…maybe 10’000 tickets twice a year at 50 notes = 1m…..loss of tv…can’t be more than 2m…..crack at CL every year via diddly champions route….10m+ ….the loss of a 10000 season ticket holders would dent but not leave us worse off than we have been for the last three years.
Ach who cares its money that causes all the issues in the first place…..only people who are benefiting are the mediocre footballers who offer nothing in real terms compared to their predecessors (and of course their parasitic agents) but derive many times the wealth.
Good point Steadward67 , didn’t think that losing the hordes ticket money would have been an issue for Celtic but we do appear to have a lot to gain.
Lets say sevco took 5,000 away to most SPL grounds times 25 notes or around 125K a game times twice a year 250K per club times 10.. 2.5 million. Lots of numbers being thrown around but no actual breakdowns of where this supposed loss will be.
In the eyes of MSM thats nearly 16 Million. Obviously the other 14 Million was revenue before tax to the old Sevco.
Despite what the rags say I can only see more money going into other SPL coffers if Sevco stay in div three for a while. Celtic will undoubtedly be able to offer the other clubs a better deal than any coming out of ibroke.
The alternative is for us to exit Scottish football. Time will tell but I honestly think that football will be the winner over the next few weeks and sevco will be very lucky if they are in div three.
New log in page eh!…Maybe that’s whit broke the blog aroon’ 11.
Me….Ah was just thinking aboot the JJ man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVkqQ8BDiWA
Teuchter
@SydneyTim
Great to hear some different points of view!
I’m quite ambivalent towards our current goalkeeper, but often feel that it’s a hard position to rightly judge, especially given the level of opposition we find ourselves against regularly.
That said, continuity alone is something that is massively overlooked by the average fan in terms of a success factor. Ignoring my non-opinion on Big Fraser, I’d gladly pay the money agreed to get in a keeper who is:
a) the same keeper we had last year
b) already settled in Glasgow
c) will have a similar resale value in 2-3 years time.
Regardless of the possibility of the Polish or Croatian players we looked at last year being “better” goalkeepers in either the short or long term, the risks that come with signing a player in a crucial position has been well and truly mitigated.
This is especially true in the position of goalkeeper, where you’re on your own. There is no week on the bench to “regain fitness”, or playing a different role, there is only success or failure.
When you consider that Izaguirre, Mulgrew, Rogne, Lustig and Adam Matthews are all 25 or under, it was an essential purchase to buy someone in whom those young players intrinsically trust (sadly, Iker Casillas seemed quite busy over the summer, otherwise we could have tried for him).
It was also essential to go about our business in this transfer window with the minimum fuss and press visibility. The Scottish press would have loved to be reporting on anything to do with us failing to buy our targets, and use us as a (false) example of money woes without “club 12?”.
And sometimes thats all that is needed. Minimising disruptions, keeping continuity, keeping team spirit, and enforcing the “vision” for the next 2 years in our young team.
I’m not sold on Foster as a great keeper yet, but I think we did a really cracking bit of business today to keep him.
=====================================================
I also think there is a bit of “re-education” needed among football fans, and in especially amongst ourselves as to how much money we have and how much money is in our game.
With the advent of the transfer window, and the parachute payment system down south, dwindling TV money, and the complete financial mismanagement of, well, every other club in Scotland – the old fashioned “transfer system” really doesn’t exist anymore.
Allow me to quantify that.
Outside of Celtic and Rangers, no club in Scotland has paid more than £100,000 for a player from another club in Scotland in the last 10 years.
Hearts, for example, have not paid ANY money to another Scottish club since 2001, when they paid a MASSIVE £70k for Andy Webster (Arbroath) and £50k for Steven Boyack (Dundee)
Andy Webster (rangers), Jamie Hamill ( Kilmarnock),
John Sutton (Motherwell) and Mehdi Taouil (Kilmarnock) all signed in 2011, and all were free.
The good old days, and by that I mean up to the 90s, of buying & selling between clubs is gone. Ignoring ourselves for a moment, Inverness are only giving 12-18 month contracts to players (and have been for at least a season), because the idea of giving someone a contract with the hope of reselling them is now “pie in the sky”.
Aberdeen are effectively bust, owing £32m to the bank on a turnover of about £8m per year. Kilmarnock are effectively HBOS fc. St.Mirren are only here thanks to Tesco. Dundee United are in the same boat. As soon as a player at any of these clubs has a half decent season, they head down to League 1 or 2 in England ASAP. Goodwillie aside, none of them have generated a fee of more than £100k – most have been free/out of contract.
(Hibs, are of course the exception, as they “regularly” sell players for excess of £1m).
I know all of that seems obvious, but there is a reason I raise it. Last year we had 9 centre-halfs on our books – 10 if you count Victor Wanyama (I don’t)
Kelvin Wilson, Mulgrew, Rogne, Majstorovic, Loovens, Hooiveld, Darren O’Dea, Josh Thompson, Marcus Fraser (and Victor Wanyama)
Each of these players, even those out on loan, were being paid by Celtic (at least in part). And why? Because transfers in the traditional sense are all but gone. Before signing a player, you have to be confident that (even at a loss) you can get a return on them – even if that means moving them on for free at a time of YOUR choosing, and not having someone sit around collecting wages.
We are in a situation where any two Man City players earn more each week than all of Scottish Football put together. Being the only big club in Glasgow, there is a good chance now that it may be down to this: Carlos Tevez earns more each week than all of Scottish football put together. I’ll need to re-run the maths (its 4.30am), but just think what that says about our league, money, wages and transfer fees.
We will never again go back to buying players for £3m. £2.5million is our new “very expensive”. It has to be, as not only do we have a small pool to buy from, but we have an even smaller pool to sell to.
We’ve sold 1 player to the EPL in the last 6 years – and he previously played in the league. In fact we’ve never sold a player to the EPL that we didn’t buy directly from the EPL, and we’ve never made a profit from a transaction involving an EPL team in 15 years; apart from Stillian Petrov to Villa.
The EPL doesn’t want to know, and for the most part neither does the Championship, while League Two teams can’t afford to match the wages our middling players are on.
Every time we buy/sign someone we are realistically looking at 50 teams to which they can move on to afterwards (if still under contract). That is an incredibly small market; and it dwindles every time someone from Scotland goes to England and crashes and burns (where is Kris Boyd now? Man Utd? Real Madrid?).
On top of that, Neil has not proven the best at getting immediate results from people [e.g. Juarez (4m), Bangura (2m), Murphy (1.5m), Kelvin Wilson, Majstorovic, Ljungberg, El Kadouri and Brozek]. Even stalwarts in the team last season took some time to settle in and find their feet under the manager (e.g. Charlie Mulgrew and Joe Ledley). I’ve long said you can (partly) tell how much you can trust a manager to spend money based on how quickly loan players settle in (hello Ramon Vega, goodbye Brozek and El Kadouri).
We need a clear out. Regardless of what your (or my) opinion of many of the first team squad is (I’m sure all have our favourites and those we’re thinking we should move on), we have a huge squad with many bit part players that are all sucking up wages.
Loovens, Majstorovic, DuRi, M wilson, El Kadouri, O’Dea, Hinkel, Hooiveld, and Thomson were all hear last summer and are no longer with Celtic. Thats a huge amount of changes for just the defence in 1 year.
Keeping continuity with the like of big Fraser, allows us to make changes in other parts of the squad while minimising disruption. In this economic climate, I think its a good bit of business.
@Teuchter ár lá
The login page changed around 2am.
Good Morning all. Good day to you.
Another day with +35C here.
morning zbyszek , wet and windy in the south pacific today.
kevinjohn interesting reality check , not what most supporters , me included , want to hear. It does support the idea that we need to move to EPL land if we want to continue to see class footballer players at Celtic park anytime soon. We could get lucky by discovering them , local talent the likes of the 60’s is no longer an option, or we could just enjoy supporting and watching Celtic in whatever league they are in and whatever standard of player they can afford.
добро утро от черноморското пристанище Бургас.
Practise makes perfect on this duel keyboard -)))))
38C forecast for today on the Black-Sea
I’m NL in NZ Tauranga
Good Morning to you.
Henryclarkson
Are you in Burgas or Golden Sands? I have been there ten years ago. I wonder how the places have change since my visit. Very nice people Bulgarians are.
Zbyszek on 3 July, 2012 at 06:17 said:
Henryclarkson
Are you in Burgas or Golden Sands? I have been there ten years ago. I wonder how the places have change since my visit. Very nice people Bulgarians are.
Morning Zbyszek, five kilometers from Nessebar which is “Sunny Beach” region.
Burgas.
Sunny Beach is now a concrete jungle full of hotels and appartments.
Nessebar is of course the old town and it’s still the same. Burgas is becoming a bit like any European City, but yabash yabash as they say ……………slowly slowly.
HenryClarkson
Watch out you don’t get eaten.
MWD
Moonbeams WD. Kano 1000 \o/ Supporting Neil Lennon 100%. Champions. C’mon Wee Oscar. on 3 July, 2012 at 06:37 said:
HenryClarkson
Watch out you don’t get eaten.
Not a lot of chance of that happening mate, they’ve exhausted the land on which they can build on.
Henryclarkson
I know that Nessebar is nice, old place. Burgas was nice place too. I hope they improved the airport. Loved local restaurants with good food and Rakija. “Rakija je sveta voda”, “Od Rakija glave ne bolji”. Rakija, Kadarka, Pliska, Slancev Briag.
Green’s sensational scheme would:
Back SPL voting reform and slash the Old Firm’s influence;
Agree a fairer split of revenue and cut payments to the Old Firm;
Accept the transfer embargo given by the SFA appeals body;
Pay all Gers’ football debts at home and abroad;
Take a points deduction for at least one, possibly more seasons;
Issue a public apologise for Gers’ past wrongdoing.
I must have missed the Sevco-Celtic PLC meeting to discuss these arrangements.
When did this happen?
Morning Friends, I see the DR is up to its usual tricks. I fully expect the headline tomorrow: “If Clubs Vote against Newco Will The Last Person to Leave Scotland Please Turn Off the Light.”
Zbyszek
Never touch the stuff -)))) i leave that to the locals.
New airport was finished 2 yrs ago about 5K from Burgas.
Good Morning everyone from a very hot and sunny Red Sea Coast!
There may be a possible disruption to normal CQN weather services this morning as I am not sure if it has been disclosed on here but, our very own, much loved, great friend of mine and resident weatherman – JOBO BALDIE is 50 today.
Jobo – your secret (if it was one) is out! Have a great day my friend and a great holiday. Don’t be over doing now – a man of your age! :O)
Happy Birthday
sTICks
I’m worried about the SPL without Newco, or the SFL without Newco in SFL1.
By all accounts there will be a £500m shortfall in projected revenue over 5 years, indexed at CPI.
Zbyszek
Rakia is best described as a GradeA hallucinating drug.
jtsTICks on 3 July, 2012 at 06:50 said:
————
So the Irish Sea isn’t good enough for ye, eh?
JOBO BALDIE is 50 today.
Happy birthday Jobo ,you ole git :O)
DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO…..
(on the edit profile section of wordpress) unconnect google/facebook/twitter from the wordpress account?
I am ….”Currently connected to Google”
I no longer wish to be.
Any ideas?
Happy 50.
Only 66 months to go.
Happy half century Birthday Jobo for when you surface in EK. Hope the Sun is shining for you mate.
jtsTICks
I was wondering why the weather has been so bad.
Happy 70th Jobo.
MWD
Hector
Click on your nome de blog (in green) at bottom of page just above comments box. Delete your google setting.
MWD
Henryclarkson
Cheers.
Jobo Baldie
Happy Birthday, Sir.
I wonder how many years people need to practise their knowledge of the weather and weather reports to become that good reporter as you are?
So THE Rankers out the SPL and sfl could cost £16m
What COULD the authorities do with £90m
What could the local businesses do with the revenue that they were bumped.
What could Rapid do with £1m
What could hearts do with £800k.
WHAT COULD SCOTTISH FOOTBALL DO WITHOUT SPIRTING INTEGRITY AND BY DOING THE RIGHT THING .
Traynor are you worried???
I wonder why ?
Moonbeams WD. Kano 1000 \o/ Supporting Neil Lennon 100%. Champions. C’mon Wee Oscar. on 3 July, 2012 at 07:00 said:
Hector
Click on your nome de blog (in green) at bottom of page just above comments box. Delete your google setting.
———————
How do you delete it? I can’t see an option for that.
Was big 4-0 yesterday…
Delighted with my new CP slab with me and my 3 kids names on it
thebhoyfromoz on 3 July, 2012 at 00:06 said:
Thanks for all the advice about cycling around Arran. Used to think ridding Scotland of huns would be the single thing that would immeasurably improve the country, would like to include midges to that. Both blood sucking parasites.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ironically,oranges act as a midge-repellent.
Not to be confused with a minge-repellent,an apt description of some people I know…..