Two players arrived during this transfer window: Rami Gershon and Tom Rogic, with no first team players leaving the club. I don’t know what Neil has planned for Rami but his loan deal and stats at Standard Liege suggests he is here as cover. I expect to see as much of him as we saw of Pawel Brozek last season.
20-year-old Tom Rogic is different. He joins the club on the same runway as Victor Wanyama, Beram Kayal, Adam Matthews, Mikael Lustig and Emilio Izaguirre. I’ve refused to watch his YouTube clips but there is every reason to hope he will be as successful a recruit as our other recent acquisitions of a similar profile.
I’ve been banging on about Asset Management for years. The mantra being – they all have their price and if any club fails to grasp this reality they will underachieve. Against this backdrop, Gary Hooper will either sign a new contract in the coming weeks or there is a good chance he will leave for nothing when his contract expires in June 2014.
A fundamental problem prevented a deal being done for Gary last month. His value to Celtic, not necessarily in this season’s Champions League, but in the same tournament’s qualifiers in July and August, is far greater than his value to any suitor. In other words, his value as an asset is not measured by transfer fee alone. This squad should have enough to reach the Champions League group stages next season, worth the best part of £20m to Celtic. Any deals have to be measured against this target.
The kind of transfer decision Celtic made yesterday, a profitable club holding onto a player and at the risk of losing him leaving for free, is so much healthier than the scenario we previously faced, in an arms race with a rival who was prepared to spend money they could not afford in order to beat us. What a mistake that whole ‘Old Firm’ thing was. Glad to see the back of it.
The ‘big clubs’ in England didn’t come looking for Gary. Instead, a well-run club made several attempts to acquire a good player on a price appropriate for their income. No harm in that, you have to give Norwich the respect any yokel deserves trying to hook up with a beauty queen (nothing implied about people from Norwich, or Gary as a queen!).
There is no guarantee the same club will be playing top-flight football when he becomes available, or that a club with a greater income, or with a more flamboyant approach to spending, will move for him, so there is every chance that Gary and his new agent will figure out that an extra year on his Celtic contract for a hefty wage rise is a decent option.
There is an interesting side plot to the Hooper non-transfer. Victor Wanyama is sitting on an offer of a substantial wage increase to extend his contract from 2015 to 2016. Unless someone comes in with an offer greater than his value to Celtic in Champions League campaigns he’ll be here until 2015.
Chances of both players signing new contracts in the coming months has to be a wee bit higher today. All those meaningless scripts about Celtic being a selling club floating around various places will have to be shelved for another time. We are a selling club, but only at the right price and the right time, just as it should be.
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Quantum
A very valid point, is the auld deid huns euro coefficient passed onto sevco?
Howabout the auld deid huns lack of discipline record, is that passed onto sevco?
Tigertim
Didn’t they show their uefa cup final at ipox and still had about 20 or 30 arrests in an all huns crowd
Ah mean an all chelski crowd
johann murdoch
A wise man the Zheng…
estorilbhoy,
Its not a beam back as such, they are selling out the lounges, a sort of ….sash bash sort of thing,……. nothing tacky, all done with great dignity…….. and Tennents,……… No Magners will be on sale.
MONTEBLANCO
So Kenya is using its limited water resources to grow roses?
Add in fertiliser run-off and soil erosion,and you have a potential famine in a really rich area.
As happened in Zimbabwe,albeit for different reasons.
All for a cheap way for guys to try and get their leg over………
Asonofdan-Of course a strong governing body would have papped them out the competition…….
Bhoys, in a suite overlooking the 18th at The Old Course for Mrs Kikinthenakas birthday, have champagne, please tell me I can crack it open….OG….what a birthday present it would be…..just need to be on the ran dan all weekend!
Is it a new rumour or just the same old one ?
TT,
Thanks, bit of an orange crush then :))
estorilbhoy
15:09 on
1 February, 2013
Why were Sevco allowed to beam back a game live which is being played in Scotland?
Because the rules do not apply to them. Doh. How many times does this have to be explained.
:>}
The Raven -If you going,ask Gulleme about the huns trashing Barcelona Part 2…
I don’t expect many sevconian burds to get roses this valentines day. More likely to get a black eye for mentioning it.
corkcelt, 15:13
Awaiting confirmation my good man
I think Sevco are just putting on a dodgy middle east channel in the lounges and getting the stupid zombies to pay.
Heaven help them when they lose the connection or the picture freezes…
O.G.
Good or bad confirmation?
Chuckles selling ibrokes I take it? It would explain his absence…
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS
No such thing as a cheap leg over…you pay forever!!
Here endeth the lesson
BMCUW
More or less mate, oh but to guarantee your leg over ye need Chocolates to go with the flowers….don’t even think about where the cocoa comes from, thats an even more heartbreaking story..
http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/19/child-slavery-and-chocolate-all-too-easy-to-find/
Afternoon bhoys from a wet Kildare.
All good stuff not losing Hoops or anyone else.
OG, how much longer ??? I only have another 10 mins on this thing, people waiting, the joys of rural life, and can’t find a Wifi
kikinthenakas, Nice one just in from a game myself, much less salubrious course I can assure you, started Birdie, Par on first 2 holes, things went somewhat downhill from there on. O.G. has me on tenterhooks with his rumour, anyhow if I were you I’d crack open the champagne either way. Teamed up on Facebook with another one of your pals last night, TimsinOhio, chatting with him as he was flying to Chicago, its a small world.
Challs has been rather quiet of late…..
Just read Mark Dingwall’s article.
Personally I see no reason to disagree with Rangers International’s Director of Communications on this issue:
“No matter how Green dresses it up, newco = new club. When CVA was thrown out Rangers died.”
Case closed.
What’s all this guff on RM about ducks. Sevco is a duck, as was RFC, only thing is they are different ducks. It’s not uncommon i believe for one duck to vacate one spot in a pond and be replaced in that spot by a different duck which does nevertheless also quack like a duck.
Corkcelt
Small world indeed….Sancerre open at the moment….heading to a wee Italian for food…champagne chilling!
Roses ?
Every time I go for dinner with Mrs S of T , I get hassled by Bangladeshi men trying to sell me a rose .
The Roses come from Kenya .
The people who organize people smuggling from Bangladesh have a side business in flogging roses . Spoke to one guy recently who told me he’d travelled overland from Dacca to Libya and had then crossed the Med in a big dinghy . He [ and many others ] was dumped on a Sicilian beach and told he was in France. Guys who sell the roses earn a pittance in commission .
Desperate business
Whatever they claim, I say they’re Donald Ducked.
A dead duck…..
Chairbhoy, me too. a Liverpool fan growing up and my dads pal was friends with Davie provan and got me a signed photo in scotland strip, my uncles were Hoops and when they found the DP pic went nuts. Wanted me away from it all for that very reason. But one of my uncle used to take me when u could be lifted over the barrier to the old jungle and i loved it, sitting on the barriers watching Bmclair,walker, J Miller.
KLV
kikinthenakas
How wee is the wee Italian?
I DEMAND to know!
HH!!
Chairbhoy.
Wonder how many parents steered their kids away from Parkhead for this reason.
Hail! Hail!
>>>>>>>>>
My granda Joe took me and my brother to most games at Celtic park when i was young,via a few pubs on the way as wee walked from cally rd.
The one game that my ma wouldn’t allow my granda to take us was against deaco.
Started making my own way with my mates as i got older and my ma worried herself sick until i got home.
I got attacked on the way home from ipox and ended up in casualty in the early eighties.
I’m glad they died and pray the reincarnation follows thems.hh
OG…,
Is it BDO business ?
Tallybhoy
Even the Mrs laughed at that…..was Donadoni not a wee Italian!
New restaurant opened in St Andrews before Christmas got great reviews….off for a leisurely day eating and drinking and hoping OG has big news!
Come on O.G. a hint mate, Will you find out today?
Thanks,
KLV
Is it worthy of Paul doing a new article?
KLV
bada………will do …………off to it now
When Challs was selling the share issue to the monkeys,he stated City Investors bought £21 mil.If this is untrue and related to O.Gs rumour,can he get charged for it? Jabba said at huns meeting last week it was around 10 mil,inc the City money possibly?
Kenji Gorre ?
KLV
The raven-Enjoy,one of the very few on Sky who know what they’re talking about.HH
Another explosive, nuclear, exclusive?
Is the “dossier” finally being released?