Awww isn’t it something to see Sevco fans so happy?
They’ve read today’s papers and believe the club is on the way to a sterling transfer deal.
This is pure “jam tomorrow.”
You know how I know?
Because if Berahino was available for the cut-price deal they say he is and at the salary the articles have suggested I think a certain other Scottish club would be interested.
And if we get involved there will be no tug-of-war for his signature.
We’d be offering Champions League football and a higher salary than they could dream of. And he would be the perfect signing to offset any subsequent loss of Moussa Dembele, not that one would have anything whatsoever to do with the other.
Any Sevconite who thinks we’d miss out on this – especially if they found themselves in pole position and we nicked in there – is barking.
Any Sevconite who thinks he’d choose Ibrox over Celtic Park is a moron.
But the truth is, those “he’s on £20,000 a week so we have a chance” stories are arrant guff. This guy has been the subject of a transfer battle down there, with clubs offering eight figure sums for him. Eight figure sums. The lowest recorded offer was a £17 million offer from Stoke.
“But Celtic got Dembele on the cheap …” is the frequent refrain. Let’s examine how we did that. First, we have a confirmed record of having developed and sold players to EPL clubs. At no time did we buy a player to do the football equivalent of the “quick turnaround”. Secondly, Dembele was a player with huge potential but without the hype that has surrounded Berahino for the last few years. No club, at any time, had offered crazy money for him until now.
If they had, he would not be at Celtic Park and that’s the stone cold fact.
Third, we did offer Moussa Champions League football and the chance to play under Brendan Rodgers. Sevco might be able to offer Berahino the early rounds of the Europa League – not the Groups mind, the early rounds.
It’s more likely that if UEFA FFP rules are followed that the best they’ll be able to offer are the BetFair League Cup groups.
They can forget getting him for low wages too; if he’s on £20,000 a week right now he’ll be able to double or treble that this time around. People think that a tribunal fee would put other EPL clubs off trying to get him on freedom of contract; guess again.
As I said, the lowest offer for Berahino was £17 million. A club which offers that isn’t going to be scared to take their chances at a tribunal. The last top EPL player who went in one of those was Danny Ings, who moved to Liverpool from Burnley. The tribunal set the final figure at £8 million including add-ons. He quadrupled his wages.
If an English club goes to a tribunal with this guy he’ll earn upwards of £50,000 a week and the fee will be set at around £10 million. Every club who’s expressed an interest has already offered them more than that.
Berahino is also one Hell of a dressing room bad influence; he was banned by his own club and went on strike over their failure to accept one of those multi-million pound bids. You know why? Cause he thinks he can get mega-money at another club.
What does that suggest about his chances of moving to Ibrox?
Today Sevco are on the verge of signing an American midfielder on loan for half a season; he’s played precisely no games for Bournemouth, who signed him on freedom of contract at the start of this campaign. He’s a defensive midfielder, injury prone and who some have said lacks the stature to play in that position at a high level.
Arrogance, as I said the other day, that Warburton doesn’t think those things disqualify him for a starting slot at an SPL club. They might also manage to bring in another loanee, the “wonder boy” from Arsenal is widely tipped, if he decides to leave Spain.
All this is to say that I understand why these “jam tomorrow” stories are coming out, especially as Celtic have splashed the cash already and are warding off bids for our own top stars; today it was Kieran Tierney being linked with an eight figure move away, which the player has laughed out of the room, although admitting it’s flattering to be linked with those kind of deals.
But Sevco fans who are peeing themselves with excitement over this nonsense ought to realise when they’re being trolled. The people who got this story out there are their own board of directors, to mask a chronic lack of vision in the here and now.