Last month I wrote about the highly-effective transfer windows culminating with the capture of Mikael Lustig in January 2012. The list of those who arrived over the next 18 months, culminating in the signature of Teemu Pukki on 31 August 2013, is largely a catalogue of expensive mishap. If only one of of the strikers signed during that period: Miku, Lassad, Balde or Pukki had made the grade, we would have been in better shape for the Champions League qualifiers.
Those mishaps sowed the seeds of where things went wrong recently but we brought in six players this summer, and in order to compete in the Europa League, we pretty much need five of them to command a regular starting place.
Craig Gordon is an excellent piece of business. Fraser Forster overcame almost all those doubters who would rather we bought Stipe Pletikosa in 2012 instead, but we have replaced Fraser with an equivalent, and banked the lion’s share of £10m in the process.
This alchemy is only possible due to doubts over Gordon’s fitness. We’ll find out how well-established his recovery is in the months ahead but the signs are good on this front.
Jo Inge Berget was signed on loan, like Amido Balde a year ago, he early in the transfer window. There is a great misunderstanding that there’s a shortage of players available early in the window. There are lots of players available the moment the window opens. For a reason. Jo wasn’t wanted by Cardiff City, who he made only two appearances for since joining in January.
He was given an unfair burden on his debut, in a highly-dysfunctional performance by Celtic in Warsaw, and, a solid performance against Dundee United apart, has been one of a number of players who have appeared lost in our game-plan since then. He has until Christmas to make his mark before he is due to return to Cardiff, but his chances will be limited by the subsequent signing on Wakaso Mubarak.
Wakaso is here on a year’s loan, with Celtic having an option to make the deal permanent, if he proves his worth. I hear good things about him; he has pace, strength, skill but his most prominent attribute is attitude, which he has in spades. This didn’t sit will in Kazan, where he was somewhat isolated.
Bulgarian midfielder, Aleks Tonev, bounced straight from medical couch to treatment table after his loan move from Aston Villa. He’s now fit and will be available for selection when play resumes after the international break and I hear Ronny Deila is keen on the player.
We now know that Manchester City teenage central defender, Jason Denayer, was brought in to play first team football. The player is highly thought of by City and Ronny, but I wouldn’t expect too much from him in what is his inaugural season of first team football.
Stefan Scepovic has the distinction of contributing 100% of the money spent on players signed by Scottish clubs this summer. He was Celtic’s first choice striker, and, as we discovered late in the day, was wanted by scouts in Spain, so the indicators are reassuring. His experiences over the past week have not without trauma for the player, but he kept focus and his word to join Celtic.
The overwhelming observation from our activity this year is the predominance of loan signings, which is a strategy I suspect was hatched after the ‘No refunds’ deals for Pukki, Balde and Boerrigter last season. We will get more from some of them than others.
Taking Berget for six months was clearly a short-term fix to an immediate gap in the squad. I don’t think we’ll see too much of him from now on. Despite the fact that Jo didn’t make a perceivable difference during our European qualifiers, I don’t have a problem with short-term deals in principle. We could have benefited from one for a target man.
Denayer will almost certainly return to Manchester next year, a more mature player, having pushed Efe and Virgil for a year.
Aleks Tonev and Wakaso Mubarak are here to impress, both are working for a permanent deal. I expect Mubarak to play in his favoured position on the left, with Tonev behind him in a more central role alongside Brown and Johansen.
Ronny has been putting apples in orange crates so far this season but with a central three of Tonev, Johansen and Brown, behind Mubarak, Scepovic and Forrest (or McGregor), he’ll have the personnel to play his favoured 4-3-3.
Two first team regulars left the club, the thoroughly professional Fraser Forster and Georgios Samaras. It was time for both to move on. Fraser, as Southampton was the right club for him, and £10m was the right price for us, Georgios, as he had become increasingly peripheral to team plans under Neil Lennon and would have been even more out of the picture under Ronny. Would Georgios have made a difference in our Champions League qualifiers? There’s a good chance he would have against Maribor but the gap against Legia was bigger than 6’3”.
Pukki and Balde were sent on loan, in the hope they impress and move on. Bon chance. Tony Watt was sold for £1.2m to Standard Liege, who will fancy they can take Tony’s undeniable potential and turn it into an asset their manager wants to work with. It’s been years since we’ve produced as exciting a young player as Tony but he’s now been shipped on or out by three managers.
I would still like to see John Guidette added to this list, even without European football – especially if he is prepared to stay beyond the end of the season. The incumbent strikers, Stokes and Griffiths, will continue to get game-time, but neither is suited to the lone-striker role.
I’m not going to sell a Europa League campaign as anything like the Champions League, but it is very important this squad is ready for Europe. Without much domestic competition (I’m ignoring Inverness and Dundee for a moment) we need to be competitive in the group stage and aim to progress to the latter stages of the competition.
Thumping Dundee United 6-1 taught us nothing, we need to mature as a team against European competition and exorcise the ghosts of Legia and Maribor. No matter how good the new arrivals are, there’s no way they would gel well enough to allow us to do anything more than endure >80 minutes of defending our 18 yard line in Champions League football this season.
We’ll miss the money, prestige and Zadok the Priest, but the Europa League is a better level for us right now.
My thanks to Canajunbhoy, who retires after running the Quick News section for the best part of a decade. Quick News will be back in a different format in the future.
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Many 16 year olds are more politically and financially aware than many 50 year olds.
justafan
You’ve just reminded me of my dad & mum telling me about school days in the 1920s and being ‘cured’ of their left handedness.
Teachers rapping their knuckles with rulers and even tying their right hands down.
As a result, till their dying day, God Rest Them, they remained left handed lol.
——————–
It was more recent than that, my Mum was the same, grew up in the 40s but was never allowed to use her left hand the write. As a result, great writing with her right hand but is so cack-handed :o)
Auldheid – if you’re old enough to pay tax, you deserve to have a say in how tthey’re spent.
Ray Singh Car at 17.11 said:
Salmond is in a win-win situation here. If there is a NO vote it will probably still amount to him having additional powers. A YES vote and he gets given the reins completely.
Not true. If its a NO vote they UK parties will seek to lower expectations about vague talk of extra powers. As yet, no significant extra powers have been guaranteed. As always we’ll need a strong Scottish Parliament to fight for every crumb.
If there’s a YES vote, Salmond leads the first independent government until the next Scottish election. There are plenty up and down this country who would vote for a Labour dug against any other candidate. For the first time in decades, a Labour vote might just mean policies aiming for some kind of fairer society here in Scotland away from the New Tory Labour we now have at UK level. That’s if there are any Labour politicians in Scotland of sufficient calibre.
The is a referendum to let the Scots run Scotland – whatever anyone thinks of Salmond. More and more Scottish Labour supporters are now seeing the bigger picture and that’s why the YES campaign is doing so well as we approach 18 Sept.
Justafan
Yes it is possible to teach a young player to use two feet,I have trained them my self.
It is the same as teaching them another language ,start early enough and they will pick it up.
Super Sutton
Still remember coaching the “kick with your other foot routine”.
It was like me trying to learn a golf swing.
I would have them keep practice slamming their right foot down beside the ball and just swinging their left peg through the ball. Some were more adept than others.. :o)
mysonsaysiwasrightallaong CSC
—
My Dear Kojo….
Jings..! Crivvens..! Help M’Bhoab..!
We’ve Goat A Real Trio Of ‘Characters’…
In Wakaso-Skeptic-Guidetti……
‘Los Trios Di Caniomalars’..?
Leigh Griffiths Wull Be Like A Shrinkin’ Violet….
In Comparison…
Hope They Don’t Lead Him Astray….
Wi’ Their ‘Leetle’ Problemos..!!
Still..Laughin’
——-
The Observer
Stoke City’s striking weapon: Swede dreams are made of John Guidetti
The ultra-confident striker on loan from Manchester City wants to be the best player in the world and prove all the doubters wrong – starting in the FA Cup at Chelsea on Sunday.
‘What I care about is scoring a goal in front of 50,000 people, all screaming your name,’ says John Guidetti. ‘It’s the best feeling in the world and I’ve missed it.’
Saturday 25 January 2014 12.00 GMT
“In Sweden it’s not allowed to say good things about yourself,” John Guidetti explains. “You’re not allowed to dream. People used to ask me: ‘What’s your biggest dream?’ I wanted to be the best football player in the world. That was my dream. Except in Sweden it’s not accepted. ‘Who does he think is?’ they’d say. ‘He should stop talking.’ But who is someone to say I’m not allowed to dream? A dream is a dream, not necessarily reality, and if I could wish for anything, that would be my ultimate dream. I don’t want a pool full of candy. I’d want to the best footballer in the world.”
He’s not an ordinary John. It doesn’t take long to spot the Zlatan-levels of self-confidence, and before anyone suggests he might need bringing down a peg or two it is worth pointing out he is quite accustomed to people questioning whether he can walk the walk.
It is why his friends have suggested that when he finishes his career he opens a flower shop. “We’d call it Flowers for Doubters and send flowers to all the people who doubted me. All those people, they don’t realise they drive me on. The flowers would be a little thank you.”
We are talking in an upstairs room at Stoke City’s training ground, where he is on loan from Manchester City, slowly rebuilding his career after the freakish illness that halted his sharp, upward trajectory as one of the outstanding young talents in his sport.
There is an irony here because there will no doubt be people reading this who have never even seen Guidetti on a football pitch, and suspecting a touch of the Nicklas Bendtner syndrome. Yet the people who have followed Guidetti’s career will testify that this is a player of rare gifts. It is just that, so far, they have largely been kept from English football.
Mark Hughes, who knows a thing or two about strikers, intends to use the 21-year-old in Stoke’s FA Cup tie at Chelsea on Sunday. Roberto Mancini is another admirer. One of Mancini’s early fall-outs at Manchester City came in 2011 when he discovered the club had let Guidetti reach the end of his development contract. “I’d signed a pre-contract with Twente,” Guidetti recalls. “Mancini intervened. He went to the club and said: ‘Where’s John?’ City said: ‘We let him go.’ And Mancini said: ‘No, no, what are you doing?’ Lawyers had to get involved. I have a lot of respect for Mancini. He liked me as a player.”
It was the following season, when Guidetti moved on loan to Feyenoord, that it became apparent there was more to him than – by his admission – having “a big mouth”. At 19, he tore through the Eredivisie, scoring 20 times in 23 games, including hat-tricks against Ajax, Vitesse and Twente. His manager, Ronald Koeman, described him as “phenomenal”.
“There were supporters getting tattoos of my name. Every home game, 50,000 people, on their feet, shouting ‘Super Guidetti’. Everyone doing this [mimicking a two-handed bowing-down gesture]. They made a rap song and put me in it. ‘Look at Messi, we have Guidetti.’ It was amazing, the best year of my life.”
He talks about this period at 100 words per minute. “Life was amazing. I was heading for the European Championship with Sweden. I was trying to be the top scorer in Holland. One of the newspapers had given me their player-of-the-year award. I was going to be the youngest Swedish player in history to go to the European Championship, in contention to start every game, alongside a great player like Zlatan Ibrahimovic. I was flying. Everything was amazing.
“But then we got to my 20th birthday. My girlfriend and some friends had organised a surprise party. They rented a restaurant and part of a nightclub. But I started to feel bad, really shit. I said to everyone: ‘Listen, stay and party, you’ve done it beautifully, but I have to go home.’ That was midnight. I woke up in the night puking. The manager was fuming with me because he thought I’d been partying but, no bullshit, I’ve never had a drop of alcohol in my life.
“I was out with this stomach virus for 10 days and when I went back to training I couldn’t stand on my right leg. I just kept falling over. I was thinking: ‘It’s sleeping, man, why is my leg sleeping?’ They said: ‘Go on the bike, try to warm it up.’ It didn’t work. I tried to put my jeans on and fell over. I tried to put my pants on, fell straight back and hit my head. I couldn’t stand. I had no balance. That’s when they took me to hospital.”
The doctors suspect the original illness was from a piece of infected chicken, and that the reaction was caused by the antibodies inside his stomach attacking both the virus and his nerve system, paralysing his right leg. “It knocked out the nerve system. The nerve needed to regrow and that takes longer than a wound or a muscle. Meanwhile, the problem is you lose muscle because you can’t do anything with your leg. I lost all the strength in it. I couldn’t stand on it. I couldn’t do anything. They gave me this medicine to flush out my body and then literally it was all about waiting.”
In total, he has missed nearly two years of football. “It’s going to take a bit of time because you don’t just go straight back and boom [clicks fingers]. I was working for 19 years to become what I was before. But I feel good. I just need to play games. You hear all these things – ‘John’s career is over,’ la, la, la, la – and it’s scary. I love football more than anything in the world. People care about certain things. Me? What I care about is scoring a goal in front of 50,000 people, all screaming your name. It’s the best feeling in the world and I’ve missed it. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.”
It is some story. Yes, Guidetti is not lacking in self-confidence, but he is a fascinating guy. Worldly, too, as might be expected of someone who spent two chunks of his childhood living just outside Nairobi and playing street football in Kibera, the largest urban slum in eastern Africa.
His father, Mike, had moved the family to Kenya to help with a schools project. “I loved it,” Guidetti says. “My favourite place on earth. I tell everyone I want to live in Kenya when my career is finished. People say: ‘You’re crazy, you could live anywhere and you want to live there?’ I say: ‘Listen, it’s the best place in the world.'”
He has set up the John Guidetti Foundation, which will build football pitches and schools in Kenya, and he scrolls through his phone to find a brilliant photograph of himself – a skinny little boy with a mop of blond hair – in a sea of black faces from his first club, the Black Stars Kibera. What age range? I ask, and then immediately realise it was a mistake. He smiles. “There aren’t many passports, my friend.”
His debut for Stoke came as a substitute at Crystal Palace last weekend. “I said to the Swedish media afterwards: ‘If I had been on another 10 minutes, I was going to score.’ I knew I was going to score. I felt it in my body and I’m not usually wrong. I score goals, that’s what I do. I give energy. I went to Feyenoord and they said I made them believe again. That’s what I do.”
It is probably no surprise he polarises opinion back in Sweden. But surely, I ask, a nation that cherishes Ibrahimovic – the man who said the World Cup would not be worth watching if he were not involved – should embrace him, too?
“Zlatan?” he replies. “Trust me – just lately, people like him. Before that, nobody liked him. I’m telling you, in Sweden it’s not allowed to talk about yourself in a good way. But you’re always going to have doubters, people who say you’re not good enough, you can’t do this and can’t do that. Plus I do talk a lot. I speak my mind. I go to Holland and say I’m going to score 20 goals. And I do it. You get injured for two years and you see people saying: ‘He’s nothing.’ That’s Flowers for Doubters, man. The people who say you can’t make it – you’re going to eat your words.”
*ttp://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jan/25/stoke-city-john-guidetti-chelsea-sweden
~~~~~~
Bring Back Oor MegaWattie….!!
Nae Mair ‘Waifs & Strays’……
SCOTTISH Players….
For SCOTTISH CLUBS..!!!!
You Know It Makes….SENSE !
—
There Wull ALWIZ be WARS..n.. Rumours of WARS.
That’s the wey wiz Set up.. By … God.
Don’t ye Know That?
n..ye canny Buck ..The Big Guy!
So..
Jist.. Relax, Sit Back..n.. Drink yer Beer.
Kojo
Still,Laughin.
it is impossible to teach a mammal to be equally strong on both sides
this has been proven extensively over the years in well documented studies by the likes of charles darwin, david attenborough and michaela strachan
however fish are equally strong on both sides to prevent them swimming in circles
FACT
“That’s if there are any Labour politicians in Scotland of sufficient calibre.”
That is the krux of the matter. Personally I would widen your misgivings to include politicians anywhere of any hue. As Billy Connolly says, the mere fact that they wish to be politicians ought to be enough to exclude them from ever doing so.
:-)
OK then, will somebody going to the AGM ask about the two footer training thing please?
Its bound to be the least contentious question of the day!!!!
I seem to remember that Franz Beckenbauer was fairly one footed. He probably still is. What price today? ;-)
Ray Singh Car,
You make some extremely salient points, which Salmond and his cohorts (MacKaskill has been keeping a very very low profile for some reason) answer with evasion or obfuscation. As for those who feel we will be living in a socialist republic in jig time: dream on. When did 2 socialists on here ever agree to anything apart from what they detest? They couldn’t make an agenda never mind a shared vision of governance. Mind you, I would still like Sheridan and Galloway in Holyrood.
hoopy-do…
Excellent…Billy the Fish…sign him up immediately Celtic!
;-)
weeminger
” if you’re old enough to pay tax, you deserve to have a say in how tthey’re spent.”
I’ll meet you halfway there. Let’s give the vote to all 16 year-olds that pay tax then.
As for the rest, leave them to their playstations and Ice Bucket Challenges ;-)
glendalystonsils
17:38 on 3 September, 2014
tonydonnelly67
16 38
Sorry TD just back in fae ‘aff oot’
Somebody (Kittoch, I think) started putting headlines above posts so that you scroll by if it was about the referendum or whatever. Jist a wee joke.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Awe! Ok no problem mate ;)
Parkheadcumsalford….
Now to make clear you started it… Lol
Sheriden and Galloway? Socialists?
Hahahahahahahaha
Brilliant!
Malone Bhoy,
Many more aren’t.
Kicking with both feet at the same time is what some of our players have been guilty of.
hoopy-do
We really did miss out with Connor Sammon eh?
geordie munro
17:31 on 3 September, 2014
tom mclauglin
Pierce o’Leary is one of the most one footed Players I watched. Literally watched him at Douglas Park stand on one foot swivel so he could hit the Ball with the other.
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!
Ah Tony.
How have you been?
Now then. My question. Do you think I am a Hun?
Syd…
Niall McGinn scored with one of those against Morton, I think lol
Ol Chaz Mulgrew now there’s a one footed player, almost gets scared standing on his left foot :o)
McKaskill and that scotlands chief of police wuts ez face? Would give the SS a riddy,.
Awe they need is brown suits an skull badges on their lapels, scary people, very scary.
Justafan,
I think it made quite a few players less one footed was all but enough to improve passing and shooting options
hoopy-do,
Liked that :)
Neganon2
Me being a democrat, I’ll let the room decide, it’s only fair..
Is neganon a Hun?
Apologies if already covered when I was on my break..
The key sentence from the ridiculously contrived joint statement from SFA/SPFL.
“Where an international transfer certificate (ITC) is required for a player, it is custom and practice for the player’s registration to be conditional upon subsequent receipt of an ITC.”
“it is custom and practice” …really? That was why the SFA painted themselves into a corner?
So not a rule, not a requirement, not a regulation, not in fact required by anyone at FIFA or UEFA – just how the SFA/SPFL do it/have done it.
Aw ok, I completely understand why FIFA will drop everything to sort out this terrible mess. Forget about the players who will be risking life at Qatar situation, forget about the 4th world workers building the Qatar stadia who are dying, forget about Nigeria and other nations who are likely to lose FIFA membership, forget about Blatter and Platini and their power bases…
“Stop everything boys, the SFA have a problem we need to sort out for them…
I know it is one that they invented, and that neither we nor Uefa really care about, because the SFA are our agents in these matters, and we actually trust the integrity of the loan deal in question. I mean just look at how much discretion we grant to Associations, such as the FA over the Falcao loan signing.”
Bryson Farry doesn’t sound very Timmy to me.
HH
Hoopy- do
What about octopus’s :)
tonydonnelly67
McKaskill and that scotlands chief of police wuts ez face? Would give the SS a riddy,.
Awe they need is brown suits an skull badges on their lapels, scary people, very scary.
——————–
Mitchell and Webb: “Are we the baddies?”
http://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY
neilc…
Yes for most I think that’s the most likely outcome but a good outcome nonetheless!
My dear,dear,dear, Friend.. The Singing Detective
Hiya,palomime?
Great tae greet ye..as Usual.
You Hiv Raised a very GOOD POINT..
One that has bin..well.. Over Looked..
Yes.. But, Not by Kojo… Ah also hiv Noted
that .. Wakaso.. whom Ah Hid Christened?… WHACKO..
hiz a Real History of.. Social. Mis-Fitting..
Yes , he has, in the Past, bin Acting..Like..
in the woids of Ma Sainted Uncle Lou..
“A Real.. TOERAG!( Whit’s a Toerag?..ed)
Dunno.. but, it sure isnae a Somethin ye wrap aroon yer..well. Toe!
Like Ye say. Mebbe, we hiv goat oor sels a
Real Hot Potato.. tae Juggle.
Nice Chatting ,as Alwiz.
Kojo
Still,Laughin’
5 home ties following European games… excellent. Away ties after Europe are always iffy.
Hate the Sunday games though…. so miss the 3pm ko on a Saturday… get up late, nice lunch and a wee drink, game at Paradise, wee drink on the way back, basking in the glory of another win (on a good day), and then time to prepare for a good night out (or in), safe in the prospect that any overindulgence is meeting up with Sunday morning/afternoon, with the chill down to end the w/e…. bliss.
hoopy-do
17:48 on 3 September, 2014
it is impossible to teach a mammal to be equally strong on both sides
this has been proven extensively over the years in well documented studies by the likes of charles darwin, david attenborough and michaela strachan
however fish are equally strong on both sides to prevent them swimming in circles
FACT
—
If said fish was say left finned would this therefore cause it to end up pointing towards the left a bit.
If it was clever could it compensate by slightly pointing itself towards the right?
Would this indicate a fish a greater intelligence or diminished finnery?
HH jamesgang
sipsini
They’re just suckers for an easy ba’.
the_huddle
17:54 on 3 September, 2014
Ol Chaz Mulgrew now there’s a one footed player, almost gets scared standing on his left foot :o)
—-
So true it’s funny/terrifying/appalling.
Delete as appropriate CSC
HH jamesgang
jamesgang
timmery finnery more like