For Celtic, summertime business is every bit as important as the more traditional cup finals and league deciders held later in the season. We face qualifers for Champions League or Europa League group stage, which define our financial health and desirability as a potential employer.
The most important achievement was recorded on Wednesday when we qualified for the Champions League, but now we’re there, how prepared will we be?
Seven players left the squad, Daryl Murphy, who had already spent two years out on loan, Thomas Rogne and Paddy McCourt, who rarely saw first team action last season, and Tony Watt, who seems to be less effective than he was in the opening weeks of last season, and is now out on loan.
More importantly, Gary Hooper, Kevlin Wilson and Victor Wanyama all left, three players who were instrumental in our European victories last season.
Hooper is a textbook big game player who scored home and away against Spartak Moscow but he missed the home win over Barcelona and scarcely got a sniff of the ball home and away to Benfica, or in the Camp Nou, where his role as a penalty box poacher was less effective.
Kelvin Wilson had a disappointing first season at Celtic but as last season progressed there was a noticeable rise in appreciation of his talents. He had an exemplary Champions League campaign.
Victor Wanyama was the most effective central midfield player Celtic have had for some considerable time. We saw little of Roy Keane at Celtic but in Wanyama, you could see a player with the potential to go as far in the game. He is young and still has lots to add to his game, concentration, for a start, but we saw him grow from a place on the substitutes’ bench to a £12m player in 18 months.
It surprised a few that Victor (along with Gary) went to a team often found at the wrong end of England’s top flight, but he is still potential. The acclaim he received at Celtic is similar to that bestowed on Liam Miller nine years ago, whose Champions League performances were breath-taking. I still can’t fathom what happened to Miller but I hope Victor continues to improve; if he does, he could appear in the Camp Nou as a home player.
21-year-old Israeli central midfielder Nir Biton looks like a straight replacement for Wanyama. I don’t know enough about any of the new recruits yet to put my name to them but on paper, Nir works. At 6’5” he continues our current tradition of signing players born to shoot hoops, as well as wear them. A trial at Manchester City fell apart amid a diplomatic incident involving his nationality. He was going to make a move to a Champions League team at some point and, for the player, Celtic will look like an excellent option.
There was a moment during THAT game at Fir Park in 2005 when Craig Bellamy tore up the turf with the ball before looking up for someone to accept his cross, only to throw his arms up in frustration that there was no one in the box. Having one fast player is just not effective.
We’ve had pace-merchant James Forrest for a few years but we don’t play a speed-based game to suit his talents. With fellow-sprinter Derk Boerrigter also in the team now one of the things I know Celtic were looking for in a striker was pace, which is what I expect to see from Teemu Pukki.
Much of our Champions League game will be about playing counter-attacking football so we have to recruit for this model.
Teemu has been playing a supporting role for Schalke since they played against him, then signed him, from HJK Helsinki two years ago, but we have not had a striker who could claim a regular starting place in that company in nine years. He is another one who, on paper, works for me.
Amido Balde has been given some protection from too much responsibility and exposure to allow him to settle into the club, city and language, Celtic is a lot different from Vitoria Guimaraes. I heard that, like Wanyama during his first season, he’ll be allowed to settle into life as a Celtic player.
Virgil van Dijk was simply delicious against Dundee United yesterday. He has height, build, speed, can run with the ball and can pass. Build a defence around him. Steven Mouyokolo is one of those gambles managers like to take on players, who were once lauded but have had injury or other blemishes on their record. Most don’t work but we’ll soon find out if Steven has overcome his injury problems.
Derk Boerrigter has skill and pace. He is another one recruited with Champions League football in mind (not to face 10 defenders in the SP), a competition he has already performed well in for Ajax.
The comment was made to me that the players coming in were uninspiring compared to the three key players who left but while I could contest that, there doesn’t seem much point. We recruited Hooper and Wilson from the lower leagues in England, and Wanyama as a teenager from a small Belgian club. It’s not what you know about a player when he signs that counts……..
For years we have been encouraging Celtic to scout better markets and find value. They have been doing this to great effect in recent seasons. The gap between where we were last season and one stage further in the Champions League was enormous. To bridge it will take a while during which time we need to make every pound work.
Enjoy the ride.
Tomorrow we’ll talk money. In short, while I blogged a couple of weeks ago illustrating the circa £17m operational gap we have before Champions League or player trading income (i.e. we are not a rich club), notions that we are anywhere near being a poor club is laughable.
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SydneyTim
10:44 on 2 September, 2013
Craig white. Finbogason club released details of the German clubs bid and said our bid and another clubs were insignificant Ie below 4m
They were releasing info to raise his price up
They told Celtic 5m to start taking
Celtic then lost interest at that price and went back to the old cheap options on non scoring strikers again
==================================================
That’s right and lo and behold the German club stepped in and paid the multi-millions over the player’s real valuation because he’s such a vital ‘proven-goalscoring’ asset, and we missed out again because of the ‘biscuit tin’ mentality…
Oh, hang on – NOBODY bought him.
Perhaps EVERYONE interested thought he was over -valued.
Perhaps Celtic managed to avoid getting stung. £5 million to START talking? So they’d be looking at least 6-7 million.
So you’d expect Celtic – just to satisfy your own particular, peculiar demands – to blow multi-millions on a player noboy else believe worth those extra multi-millions.
And if we had, you’d no doubt be on here moaning what mugs we were.
Mupperty of the lowest order. Grow up.
Monaghan 1900
My dad told me years ago that you’d never go bust in business by underestimating people’s (ra peepul’s?) intelligence or taste. SDM, Craig Whyte and Charles Green have proved him 100% correct.
TBB @ 12.37
Can’t see it myself if it was business as usual.
The FY finishes on the 30th of June.
As I have mentioned before I fear a special dividend is on the cards.
Cash flow would determine its size and that could be the reason for the delay.
CL this season and the amount goes up.
I fear the special dividend is the twin of the ST discount.
Sharing the proceeds of growth …
As a coke addled / waste of space / fandancer of a CotE might have put it.
gebhoy
12:43 on 2 September, 2013
Absolutely sick fed up of the spin….
=============================
Why slaughter a sheep?
Just stop supporting Celtic if it makes you so ‘sick’.
I’m sure Fat Sally will appreciate your backing.
SANDMAN
You may disagree with his opinions,and that is your right.
But…..
At least SYDNEY TIM can spell muppetry.
MadMitch,
If the club pays a “special dividend” out of our money i will never ever spend another penny on Celtic, we are constantly told every penny in is re-invested in the club, that would be the last straw for me.
I spend all of my spare cash on Celtic.
gebhoy
So Sky has ssn and sky bet…….
How easy is it to knock out dodgy rumors, that they know are not true, so they can clear up with the punters.
Özil is currently doing a medical in Germany to sign for Arsenal. Earlier on ssn start reporting that Man U have denied putting a late bid in for Özil.
Knock out a few of those rumors every transfer window, i’m sure they do alright out off it!
ernie lynch
11:05 on 2 September, 2013
Please stop being sensible…..doesn’t go down well with some Fholk on here…!!!!
Sandman,
aye very good ya trumpet, away and wash yer Y fronts!
gebhoy
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS forza Oscar and Mackenzie
12:46 on 2 September, 2013
SANDMAN
You may disagree with his opinions,and that is your right.
But…..
At least SYDNEY TIM can spell muppetry.
======================
LOL, I defer to his greater phone manipulating ability.
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS forza Oscar and Mackenzie
Lot’s of wheelbarrows full of Ten-bob notes required if that’s how they’re paying!!
gebhoy
12:48 on 2 September, 2013
Sandman,
aye very good ya trumpet, away and wash yer Y fronts!
gebhoy
=========================
Green and white Y-fronts, mate. Not blue, white and red
sandman
12:43 on 2 September, 2013
Brilliant post, and spot on …….!!!!
Ge … @ 12.47
Given all the talk over the clubs finances and our seemingly perilous position …
Our inability to work the transfer marketplace with supposedly improved resources …
And the need for CL qualification before we can do anything no matter out build and let go transfer strategy …
Our financial position does not make sense.
If it does not make sense then it does not make sense.
Then you have to ask why?
This place makes me laugh.
The people are outraged by the smallest thing.
Champions league 2 years in a row.
We’re untouchable in the league. Winning a treble is odds on.
This is not likely to change for the foreseeable future.
Rage away ragers, I’m going to sit back and take in the promised land and enjoy the journey where we establish ourselves as a top European team.
Hail hail
Why?
iPads are crap.
iPads predictive text shortcuts are crap.
Blogs without a edit facility are crap.
Football clubs without a growth strategy are …
…Infuriating.
A lot of people are assuming that because Heerenveen rated Finbogasson at £5m and Peterborough rated Tomlin at £xm (since they have not set a minimum level- they just asked for more), then they must be worth that sum.
In that case I have a broken watch to sell you. My minimum price is £20.
The transfer market, like all negotiations and trades, involves the seller seeking the highest price and the buyer seeking the cheapest. Usually each compromises somewhere in the middle. The only exception to this process is where a minimum price has been inserted in a contract and, even in that instance, I am sure a club, desperate for money, would be willing to accept less if their need for cash was great enough and the player was willing to move regardless of transfer fee.
So when managers trade insults and say the clubs are unsettling players, you can plausibly infer that neither club needed to do anything to upset the player because the agent, who is the player’s employee, will have already told him the “unsettling” news as he is obliged to keep his man informed.
Celtic, did nothing unprofessional in their dealings with Peterborough. They bid through official channels and, when told it would take a higher fee, they bid twice at a higher fee. Peterborough wanted more than our final bid and we did not wish to go beyond it. Up to this point, the story is very run of the mill.
Now, because the agent has kept his client informed, the player has become upset because a) he has been denied the opportunity to play for Celtic in the CL and b) He realises that Celtic rated him as worth £xm investment but no more than that.
In whose interest is it then to pour fire on troubled waters by complaining to the press that you have an unsettled player on your hands? Surely, if he was upset, you would want to keep this quiet and smooth it over in house. However, if you wanted to suggest that you had a valuable property that could be bought at a price above what Celtic had bid (albeit the added amount was unspecified) then you bring it into the press to seek those bids.
Note, ernie lynch’s point, that, at no time, did Barry Fry or Mr. McDonough state what it would take to obtain Lee Tomlin; they just asked for more. They got offered more twice but still deemed it derisory. At no point did they provide evidence that Celtic officials had unsettled the player or contacted him personally. In fact, they confirm that all the bids, however inadequate, came through official channels. No Celtic fan or press man knew of our interest in Tomlin until Peterborough contacted the press, though I am sure Tomlin’s agent would not be far behind.
And that is the crucial difference between Celtic’s bid and Benfica’s for Fraser Forster. We made a bid; they planted a Press story that they were interested in bidding. And yet some of our own will castigate Celtic for doing the proper thing through proper channels because, somehow, we did not do it early enough or bid big enough to prove we were real Playahs. Have these critics ever considered that the last minute bid was because a) a higher rated target had fallen through or b) late bidding was a deliberate tactic to pressure the seller (and this time it failed but it has been successfully used before to get value in transfers).
And as for Heerenveen holding out for £5m and nothing less, well so far, unless there is a bid in the next two days, Celtic have taken a look at the valuation and, in common with all other clubs in Europe have said no thanks unless you are willing to lower the price. The market has, so far, said no to Heerenveen and it may prove that, though disgruntled Celtic fans are very fond of Alfie, the hardened commercial negotiators are not so entranced.
Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV have money available to buy and have bought from this club before but, so far none have bid for Alfie. How could these clubs ignore such a proven goalscorer and snaffle him at this bargain price before the boys from the big leagues bid more for him? And where are all those competitive bids for Alfie? Heerenveen quoted one such bid from Cardiff, which Cardiff promptly denied categorically.
Now, Alfie might yet fetch £5m and go in the next few days but that will not undermine my point. If he was such a racing certainty to score in any league, he would have gone by now for double what was set for him.
However, Heerenveen have a mixed record in producing and selling forwards. In contrast to Ruud Van Nijstelroy, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Jon-Dahl Tommason, you can set Marcus Allback, Giorgios Samaras, and Alfonso Alves. The first named three all scored for the clubs that paid Heerenveen the big money but the last 3 were deemed failures by the clubs that bought them (Villa, Man City and Middlesboro).
So far, the market is telling Heerenveen that Alfie is more Alves than Huntelaar.
If he moves and continues scoring, he will join the legends that are James McCarthy and Steven Fletcher as the sure fire tips that Lawwell failed to buy. Like a punter that tells you relentlessly of his one successful bid that won him £100, you will not hear of the other 99 bets which lost him £1000. Likewise, we will not hear, on the pages of CQN, the hundreds of surefire, no brainer punts, which have been listed here of players that Celtic should have bought and splashed cash on, but, who somehow managed to move on to even greater obscurity with the mug clubs that bought them.
Oh, and case anyone mistakes this for happy clapping spin….. we have been that mug club in our buys of Murphy and Bangura, amongst many others. And we were mug sellers in the case of Artur Boruc and Shaun Maloney too.
The honest.mistake
Cause there are Huns among us, just laugh when they post, if fact I gonna have to go to the Vicky tomorrow to see a surgeon to get this smile off my face, that’s neary a week come this Wednesday ;)
SFTB
The Posh negotiation was cringeworthy.
It was amateur hour, worked on the rush and it failed.
PL is the worlds worst negotiator.
He pays over the odds for squad fillers.
Sandman,
I would be very surprised if the other mobs “masterplan”
involved pressuring us signing into an emerging prolific goalscorer,
who even at an inflated price could later be sold at great profit
after significantly contributing to our on field success…
Not too sure about your critical faculties there…
Sandman,
Yawn….the age old CQN riposte of saying someones a hun that you dont agree with, aye okay………keep taking the tablets.
Madmitch,
I don’t understand the moving of the goal posts in the last 6 months to a year, our host has always stated that we didn’t budget for UCL football, now we are told its a necessity?
Lenny’s comments have for me been quite eye opening in the past week, clearly a shot across PL’s bows and no matter how its dressed up all is not right!
And i wont hold my breath on the club telling us anything, any info is passed on to the trusted few who add a bit of spin on top and put it out for the masses to lap it up as gospel!
gebhoy
SANDMAN
Tongue very firmly in cheek with that one,no offence intended-honest!!
Bobby. I am Marconi the merciless :))
SFTB
Delighted to see you posting again over the past week or so, lending your unique style and ascerbic analysis to all manner of topics.
I must say though, talented as you are, I’d pay to see you “pour fire on troubled waters”.
:¬)
MadMitch
Holy mechanical marvels Batman
settings > general > keyboard > autocorrect > off
Hail Hail
The other area to worry about is the bonus being paid on certain types of shares for CL qualification and then Last 16 football.
My memory is failing on this but I hope these payments haven’t increased over the past few years beyond what was paid out when WGS did the “double”.
madmitch
12:55 on 2 September, 2013
But you’re not “infuriating” ……. Just funny….!!
SETTING FREE THE BEARS
While I agree with much of your post,I think the main stumbling block with Alfie is that someone other than PL had got the value from him last season.
Gebhoy.
And you know better than anyone else for what reason?
Are you involved in celtic’s day to day running?
Are you a whistleblower with some solid info to back up your claims?
This document is not long for this world, but is very interesting.
Please do Paul the favour of not reproducing it as it names a lot of names and is, therefore, potentially defamatory.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/164681674/Ibrox-Stadium
I’m no financial whizz kid and I see a lot of people are questioning why we now need CL money to operate when we were told we didn’t a couple of years ago, is it possible that 2 years ago when the Hun died our clubs football stategy was to win the league and if we qualified for CL then bonus. Now after 2 years have the club steadily increased ambition as they realise domestic football isn’t enough and CL every year is vital to keep supporters happy, as a result we now do need CL money to continue to grow our stead.
SFTB another sensible post
Will it ever catch on ?
madmitch
13:01 on 2 September, 2013
Just stop worrrying, then….simples..!! …….methinks thou doest protest too much ….!!!!!!!!
Leave the worrying to the bhuns…..
SFTB,
excellent post and cannot disagree wit it, but we should never ever be in the position of having to throw money at a club at the last minute, the ball is well and truly in Peterbroughs court. They could ask how much as they liked knowing we were desperate.
We spend far too much money on players like Tomlin.
Our transfer strategy seems to be made up on the hoof at times.
gebhoy
So what do you ghuys think of Tony Watt’s season long loan to Lierse ? rumours abound of disharmony and disunity in regard to our young striker on the training pitches of Lennoxtown although nothing has been verified in any official capacity to substantiate them ….. I’ve had no real reason to believe there is any truth in it but did find the timing of it strange , he was informed of the proposed move on Friday morning and the deal was concluded before the 11:00pm deadline , another thing I found strange was reading an article from Tony today in which he is clearly very excited to be heading out and full of praise for his new employers ….. never once did he mention Celtic or his desire to come back and claim his place at CP ….. maybe I’m reading to much into someth
Or maybe Caesar Penguin
Yup I like that muppet name
bollix ……… is there anything to the rumours ?