It’s good to be back. A power outage at our datacentre on Saturday caused servers to crash and subsequent database problems. Our thanks to Andrew in Belfast for his invaluable help, again…
Trying hard to ignore speculation of various players coming our way, plenty of time for that later in the month, although I will add a note of caution. The fact that a journalist gets confirmation from Neil Lennon that he is able to sign a £6m player does not constitute a promise to do so. It’s little more than bait, for those who still read such sources.
I’ve heard nothing but good things over the years about Georgios Samaras. He is a player who flourishes on confidence, and support, and does so most often at the highest level. In Europe he is Celtic’s out-ball, a player capable of bringing others into the game, turning defence into attack. It is at this rarefied atmosphere that his goal-scoring has also been most effective. Ironically his style is less effective in the SPFL, where Celtic spend far less time 80 yards from goal.
A considerable reason for the low return in the Champions League this season was that everyone knew how reliant we’d become on Georgios. He was heavily marked; by the time the ball got to his feet, three opponents triangulated around him.
It’s no surprise he has offers from Spain, and no doubt elsewhere, to consider. If he leaves I hope his lasting memories will be cheers of support, not his harsher experiences.
Definition of poor IT planning: datacentres who host their Status page at their own datacentre. “We’re down, but you can’t read this, because we’re down.”
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763 Comments- Pages:
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greenmaestro
11:43 on 8 January, 2014
Zombie Grief Cycle:
1.Stupidity
2.Anger
3.Deady-ness
4.Anger
5.Liquidation
6. GOTO 1
67Heaven … @11:45 on 8 January, 2014
Bollox…..if the price is right, we will sell VVD……that’s the only strategy for ANY Club in the SPFL……but the price would need to be over £10m, IMO….
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I think the board has to look at the bigger picture here thna simply realising a ten-fold profit on it’s ititial investment in less than a year. There is clearly a major disconnect between a large proportion of supporters and the people running the club. This is reflected in the number of ST holders who are are now picking and choosing their matches even though they’ve paid up front for their tickets. This does not augur well for next season’s renewals and based on the latest indications, the club may be lucky to hit 30k ST in 2014/15.
VVD is generally regarded as the one outfield player in our squad with real star quality and is only expected to get even better. The board could choose to cash in on him sooner than later but the knock-on from this would lead to even greater supporter/customer disatisfaction which would undoubtedly lead to a steeper decline in ST renewals. It would also jeopardise our chances of qualifying for next season’s CL group stages. These would significantly reduce our income streams which in turn would negate the financial windfall from selling him at this stage.
The longer term strategy would be to offer him improved deal on the understanding that we would not stand in his way if he wanted to move on in 18-14 months when we could receive even more if he makes the progress we expect him to. During this time, we would be on the look out for VVD Mark II which is the business model used by Porto. Whether we have the people on our board who can see the bigger picture remains to be seen.
We need a Like button.