I understand the need to strike a hard bargain in transfer negotiations.
I also understand that when the manager says someone is a priority target that there’s a lot riding on the club to go out there and bring him in. I get all that.
But the Sinclair and Duffy deals are taking way too long to close, and one or both of these players is going to wind up somewhere else unless we close the deals fast. Furthermore, the clock is ticking down on our ability to add to the squad before the next Champions League qualifiers.
We’re quite literally gambling with European qualification here.
Other clubs don’t mess around like this; they can close deals fast for the players they want. This game of call-raise-call with Villa and Blackburn is ridiculous and might also prove to be futile. Our club knows what it regards as a decent price for these two players; offer that, see what the response from the sides is, and if those deals aren’t acceptable move on and bring in someone else. Surely there’s a Plan B here? Surely there’s a backup option?
These are the players the manager wants. No-one is in the slightest doubt about that, so there’s really no excuse for not pushing these deals hard and getting them over the line, or closing them down entirely and moving on to other targets.
How many weeks have we been messing about here?
How long does it take to pick up the phone and hammer something out?
I know our directors are busy men; all have jobs outside of Celtic.
Lawwell, in particular, keeps himself occupied trying to sort out the SFA and the SPFL (except for those bits which involve getting justice for our supporters and putting in place the sort of regulations which might actually make a difference, like Financial Fair Play). It’s time people devoted themselves more fully to the job at hand. We’re a day and a half away from a deadline here, a deadline which can’t be allowed to come and go without us strengthening this squad.
Yesterday, someone sent me a graphic taken from the Celtic site, which showed total season ticket sales achieved thus far. There’s now not a seat left in the house. The fans have come through in fine style and done their bit to move this club forward. This was a partial response to the Brendan Rodgers appointment, but that appointment was seen as the trigger for even bigger changes in the way the club went about its business.
This transfer window so far just looks like more of the same; spending not one penny, dragging our feet over the signing of players and in turn denying the manager what he needs to advance our cause on the big stage. The failure to provide him with a central defender has already cost us the most humiliating defeat in our history; I dare anyone to suggest that had Efe Ambrose not been in the side that we would have conceded that ridiculous goal last week.
The goodwill that was built up by this appointment will evaporate if we’re knocked out of Europe because the manager wasn’t provided with the tools to do this job. He’s identified his targets. The need for them is clear. This is the responsibility of others at the club now, and a matter that could have been resolved one way or another with a couple of phone calls has been dragged out over weeks and is still being teased today with the clock ticking down.
Get on with it, for God’s sake.
There’s no valid reason why this hasn’t been taken care of already.