Today, one of the Scottish media’s laugh-out-loud articles; a piece that suggests Celtic and Sevco are set to “compete” for the signing of English Premier League striker Danny Graham.
This one tickles the funny bone for so many reasons.
First, how likely is it that Celtic is going after an EPL based striker in his 30’s, when we’ve got no manager?
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with us bringing in some experience, and he’s got more in his locker than either Cole or Kazim Richards, but I repeat … we have no manager for next season yet!
If this is true (and it’s sheer cobblers in my view) then I ask again; what’s going on at Celtic Park?
Who’s involved in transfer negotiations and why’s it being done without knowing whether the new guy will even want him?
On this one, I’m very happy to give our club the benefit of the doubt.
Online, it’s a piece of obvious click-bait, and in print it’s simply a means of selling crap newspapers to gullible fools, and they don’t come much more gullible than the followers of Sevco.
Imagine how these “negotiations” will go.
“Now, we have interest from Celtic. There’s an offer on the table. We’ve contacted a couple of clubs in the Championship, including Villa. Bournemouth have sent us a preliminary contract to look at. We have a pretty solid one from Burnley. Cardiff are talking twenty six thousand a week. There’s a London club putting down big money and a country club membership. What do you guys have for us? What can you offer?”
“Ahem … how’s ten ginger bottles up front, a clapped out Datsun and six grand a month? We can also throw in a membership to Scotland’s best all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant.”
I can see them being impressed by that.
So a competition between a club with no manager and a club with no money.
He would be very tempted by both, I’m sure, but as has been proved over and over again, and I’m going back to Scott Brown, when Celtic is set on getting a player on the books and a club out of Ibrox is equally determined to, there’s only been one winner.
Don’t forget that we got Scott at a time when they actually were spending money and could afford to meet decent wages and pay a transfer fee.
We’re simply a bigger club than them. We have more money than them. We can make a guy like Graham an offer he can’t refuse. The best they can hope for is to make him one he doesn’t understand and con their way to a signature by saying it’s for the pizza delivery or something.
This really has to be a slow news day, but I guess it could have been worse.
Last week, one bottom scraping tabloid actually published the “wages” of every Celtic player, in a scoop that was so brilliant not a single other title actually bothered to cut and paste it.
And where did they get this mind-boggling information?
From Football Manager.
I kid you not.
This is what passes for “news” in the Scottish sports media.
Ironic, really, as I’ll be writing later over on Fields of Green, and as last night’s readers are already aware … there’s a real and massive actual story to be told.
