When an unexpected name flies into the frame from left field there’s always a concern about what you’ve written about him before. I still remember the day we signed Kenny Miller, and an earlier blog with my assessment of the player (subsequently found to be on the money). While it’s important to be fair when assessing players, I’m not in the business of trashing them before they kick a ball for Celtic, so Miller’s signing was not a comfortable one.
With this in mind, I typed “Leigh Griffiths” into the articles database to check what had been written. Apart from match reports, there was only one comment, the day after last season’s Scottish Cup Final:
“Leigh Griffiths has had plenty of uncomplimentary discourse written about him this season, most of it deserved, so it should be recorded that he was the first Hibs player to return applause in the direction of Celtic fans yesterday, closely followed by his team-mates.
“This is the way football should be. For too long our game has been poisoned by the unique kind of rivalry you got in Scotland. More of the same, please.”
He unquestionably did deserve the criticism that came his way last year. If he gets his move to Celtic he needs to grow as a person, as well as a player, which is a big challenge. His move towards the Celtic support at Hampden was a modest but necessary first step towards reassessing other people.
Having said this, don’t go ordering your ‘Griffiths’ shirt just yet, I reckon a deal has no more than a 50% chance of happening. Wolves didn’t invite our interest and our need is to be ready by June, not February. Neither club has an imperative to do this deal, which is often an omen for snags to get in the way. Patience required, as you know………
Reminder to everyone who booked tickets for the CQteN St Patrick’s Day Dinner that they have to be paid by this Friday! Let me know if you can’t find details, celticquicknews@gmail.com
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jamesgang
“JJ I’m with you 100% on all of that Mhate!”
Which one? 10:41 or 10:45? 0:-)
JJ
79caps… Does anyone know what Finbogasson wants to do ? Maybe he loves playing in the Dutch league, is making enough money and loves his lifestyle…. and maybe he thinks he will learn more from Van Basten in a season or 2 than he will anywhere else so that his next move really is a massive one ?
Asonofdan
Best wishes to you because I know what you are going through – happened to me last year when my dad took ill. A difficult time.
KTF!
HH!!
Its deja vu for the huns
Thems want £1.4 million for Wallace, ( who they robbed Hertz for )
Forrest offer 900 k, but told to stuff it.
Huns wait on improved offer,
and wait, and wait again.
Friday night, just before window shuts,
Forrest offer 450 k
” This is bliddy robbery, but we will take it “
Robcfc11
Apparently he’s a Hibs supporter and is waiting for a call from Terry Butcher.
St Patricks day
Where in 106?
sean thornton 10:28 on 29 January, 2014
“So what the sleekit one is saying, is lee wallace has become a 600,000 pound better player by playing in the bottom 2 leagues in Scottish fitba!.”
Meanwhile, back in the real world – Sevco receive an offer of £150,000 for Lee Wallace and he is bundled out the door for an, ahem … ‘undisclosed fee’.
Anything to get him off the wage bill.
JJ
10.45 deffo
But 10.41 has a point. A good one.
HH jamesgang
I wouldn’t be surprised if Griffiths was at the game tonight.
Jimbo67 I’m sure ST is a great Celt but a change of record would be welcome. There must be some aspect of Celtic he likes or even a different moan!! Hail Hail Hebcelt
jamesgang
Are you a politician? 0:-)
Amido Baldé is a beast of an athlete. Question is, can he become a beast of a footballer? Celtic have taken a look and figured they can make him just that. My concern is that he’s 22, an age when he ought to have all the technical skills prerequisite to a career at the top, and he doesn’t.
Of all our ‘projects’ he’s probably the most challenging. If the club pulls it off though, it could be a spectacular success. Them’s the odds.
Pukki is altogether different. The fellow is clearly a talented footballer, but has struggled to deliver impact on the park. As with Baldé, there’s a challenge there, but it is an altogether different one. With Pukki, it seems it’s all about mentality. Can he grow into the head of a top professional footballer?
Given the marked difference in transfer fees paid for the pair, you’d have to conclude that Celtic are more confident of developing Pukki into the finished article, than Baldé.
Player development is, as I mentioned yesterday, quite fraught. The youth leagues are jam packed with really talented boys, but the necessary blend of athleticism, technical ability, intelligence, attitude and personality is such that few make it to the senior game.
The development of personality in boys, the emerging ‘adult makeup’, is very fast between 18 and 21, and continues as they age. The brain itself of a young man at age 18 doesn’t resemble or function in the same way as the brain of the same man aged 25, and as the brain matures, so personality emerges and behaviour changes.
We see the challenge just now with the likes of Tony Watt, where the physical and technical prerequisites are all there, but the mentality is counter-productive. Equally we see it with the likes of Paul Hartley and Barry Robson, whose emergence as top players took 10 years of professional football, touring the backwaters and slowly growing into players who could compete at the top.
A cracking example currently is Rickie Lambert. Lambert made his professional debut for Blackpool at just 16 years old. The club really rated the boy.
2 years later he was released, and was out of football, working minimum wage to keep himself. Macclesfield took a punt on him.
From Macclesfield, he spend the next 8 years with the likes of Stockport, Rochdale and Bristol Rovers, before pitching up at League 1 Southampton as a career journeyman, a full ten years since making his professional debut.
Lambert has since scored 110 goals in 220 games over 4 years for Southampton, and has recently been capped for England. He has a fair chance of playing in the World Cup this summer, a veteran at age 31.
Point is: No development system can predict when precocious potential will convert into professional performance such that it can cope with the Hartleys, Robsons and Lamberts in the game. We can measure, assess, analyse, plot development against the mean, all sorts. All it tells us is what the player is doing in the here and now. There is no crystal ball, and there is certainly no way of predicting or preventing development disrupting injury.
Why did we not sign Robert Snodgrass for a burton from Livingston when he was 21? We had after all offered him youth terms at age 15. Because at 21 years old he was showing the wherewithal to compete at a level below what we consider necessary for a Celtic prospect at that age. It’s taken Snodgrass 4 or 5 years since then, the key development phase for males, to emerge as a player capable of performing at a high level. Just like Kris Commons and so many others.
Young Gauld at Dundee Utd is a cracking prospect. I really hope he comes through and emerges as a top player. But he’s 17 years old, and has the steeplechase of young adult development to negotiate before we’ll know if he’s the real deal or the lates in a long series running back to Eoin Jess.
Celtic, given where we are in the European game, tend to sign young players who have something exceptional in their make up, but also something under-developed. Adam Matthews is perhaps the most talented young player at Celtic, but his challenge is his size. If he was built like Charlie Mulgrew he’d have been signed by Arsenal at age 19 instead of Celtic. The job is to make him sufficiently robust that he can compete at the top level. Everything else is there.
And so it is with Baldé, Pukki, Ambrose, Johanson, Fridjonson and of course, Leigh Griffiths this week. They all have something exceptional – in Griffiths case the ability to score goals from all points of the pitch – and they each arrived at Celtic with a development challenge.
All of them gambles. Some of them more than others. None of them coming with any guarantee whatsoever.
Geordie. I said 6.6m and 30k a week wasted Never said each
Auldheid. No not a fortune teller. Just picked up the phone to a few of my German tim mates ( lived there for 4 years ). They all said to a man pukki was mince before we signed him
One of then saw shalke regularly
Every player gets dissed every now and again, Sammy is just one of those players who gets more than others, not any different than from back in the 60s when big Yogi got it too, both very annoying players in my opinion, you knew they could turn it on, but after 5 mins. You knew when it was or wasent going to happen, very frustrating to watch and not make a comment, I’m sure Henrik got it that day with the OG , or did he? ;)
Hebcelt. Change of striker shambles policy and I will change the record on that. Fail fail fail
I have many times said good things about commons. Virgil. Izzy , Mathews. Lustig. Forster
But you just ignore that don’t you :)))
Jungle Jim
10:33 on
29 January, 2014
JJ I am in row x I am the guy at the back, moaning at the moaners.
79caps
10:47 on
29 January, 2014
Robcfc11
You get it, but some people don’t.
Henrik obviously not nearly as good as Finnbogason ;)
So why are the rich clubs not splashing out big money for the Icelander?
Trying to make sense of the EPL transfer market ia a mugs game.They are being taken to the cleaners on nearly every deal thats being done.The bidding seems to start at £20 million now.I have told you the guys record for the past two seasons,if thats not good enough for them then it SHOULD be great news for us.We can afford him.He is as close to a guarantee as you will find.
Reports now saying that Newcastle trying to buy the boy Grenier from France for £20 million.Is he really that much better than Johanssen?.Mad money.
Have exchanged a few posts with ST recently. My point was I found his comments unrelentingly negative….
BUT, and ST can easily defend himself without my input, what he made clear was Celtic should be signing a PROVEN goalscorer.
He does not say it is impossible for Celtic to ‘make’ a goalscorer but surely getting in someone who already has a scoring record would be less of a ‘project’.
He also wasn’t suggesting we needed to get a scorer from a top league, he was realistic, he just thought getting a scorer, say like Hooper, would be a very good idea!
Now whatever Celtics assessment was, Derk, Teemu & Mo were NOT consistent scorers. I happen to disagree with him re Amido whose ratio of minutes played and goals scored is actually quite good.
Anyway the point is STs been consistent on this one. Whatever qualities LG has or not he is a goalscorer!
HH
Jungle Jim
10:57 on
29 January, 2014
jamesgang
Are you a politician? 0:-)
*************************************************
did stand in the last but one election actually – as an independent voice of reason!
could have personally thanked all of my supporters – all 400 of them!!!!
now I’m just an amateur diplomat….most of the time!!!!!
HH to you pal jamesgang
Campbell Ogilvie still in a job, stacks of perks and grand after grand going in to his retirement fund month after month; and what does he do for his coin – well he sits behind his desk scratching his gooseberries thinking of new ways to distort old rules in favour of his favourites at the expense of Scottish football and supporters of all clubs bar one.
The rumour that he introduced EBT’s to the SFA could not possibly be true.
Shantaram, I don’t have a lot of time on my hands at the moment, I will be getting back to you, actually I can’t wait. In the interim you lying basturd, I hope you are in good health.
Bhoys and Ghirls,
Watching many EPL games I see many average or slightly above average players transferring for funny money with exorbitant wages.
Put simply we are not in the races for this type of player. The difficulty we have in attracting quality at a realistic price is patently obvious.
We all know this but sometimes its worth reiterating. There are bargains out there, but remember all the “Big” clubs have their own scouting system. Players like LG who want to come to Celtic for a reason is our best option. That reason can also include using us as a stepping stone.
Domestic SPL football will only attract ambitious players whose ambition lies elsewhere. Games in the CL or Europe is a learning curve and puts them in the shop window.
Of course we must continue trying, but let us acknowledge the difficulty and frustration we will endure in this aim.
HH.
PS ; I notice a post last night stating KC was 3-1 for first and last goal. I have never bet first and last before and I take it a 1-0 score-line is excluded. Will check the bookies laters.
STEINREIGNEDSUPREME 1054
Hmmmm.
Undisclosed fee,I like it!
Turkeybhoy – I agree you can’t argue with his record but then that’s contrasted with the fact that several teams have reputedly taken a look at him and shied away.
The only conclusion I can reach is that Herenveen are set up to play one way, and that’s to suit him and everything goes to him. If you don’t want to play that way, he might not work for you.
You know who had similar form scoring 146 goals in 155 appearances – Harald Brattbakk.
ST
“Geordie. I said 6.6m and 30k a week wasted Never said each”
I know you did.
I said each.
Ok. I’ll be less obtuse.
I don’t believe they are getting anywhere near that figure.
TBB 10:59
Thanks for the outburst of sanity!
Is it true you recently had to ask the meaning of ‘green hun’? And you a classical scholar and a failed writer too….
Just keep your eyes peeled for the ole ‘undisclosed fee’ stories in the next 48 hours regarding Lee Wallace.
Justafan. Projects in defence and to a Lesser extent midfield have worked out wonderfully for our club. More than we could of hoped Amazing job and well done to those involved
But no projects have worked upfront
Hooper was not really a project as he had a record of scoring goals
No more upfront projects Sorry it doesn’t work and has actually cost us
St Patricks day 1958
I am at the very end of Row j, next to the 106 steps. Come and say hello to me tonight on your way in.
TBB
Another of your excellent posts. The Sydney Tims of this site would do well to read it before coming out with even more unsubstantiated nonsense.
JJ
GREENPINATA
If you bet him to score the first goal,and he does,you win.
If you bet him to score the last goal,and he does,you win.
If he scores the only goal of the game,both bets would win. But they are classed as a separate bet.
If that clears it up….
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS ………FC not PLC 11:06 on 29 January, 2014
Forgot to copy you on to that last post.
The illusion has already been created with figures like £9000,000 and £1.4m.
I’ve been told Sevco will take £200,000 for Wallace or an ‘undisclosed fee’ if you like.
In term’s of lee wallace being sold for£1m this will be gone in a month anyway tick toc…
Jingle jim. Just checked back and indeed we have had only one goal scoring striker in last 4 years ( ie must score at least 20). Or am I wrang Maybe stokes had one season
Tonyd…
One of my all time favourites..John Hughes, Big Yogi. Loved the big man, still do.
You’re so right but when you saw he was going to be in the mood the excitement that built up anticipating the 85 minutes to come was just wonderful.
Actually I saw him being fantastic/hopeless in the first half and being the opposite in the second.
One of half a dozen Celts I saw who could set the crowds atmosphere all by himself!!!
Wonderful player and wonderfully frustrating!!!!
PS – love Sammi too but he couldn’t lace Yogi’s boots IMO.
Sevco share price hits 25p lol!
Geordie Munro @ 11.09
0:-)))
TBB:
There are no guarantees that rather than spend millions on imported ‘prospects’ we’d be worse off if we just gave our own youth a chance.
STEINREIGNEDSUPREME
Keep my eyes peeled?
I’m off to the bookies to have a bet on it!
Swindon done me for £9k last night,btw. Very speculative acca,the buggers got a point when I expected their dire away form to continue….