So Stuart Pearce and Alan McInally are now experts on Celtic’s transfer policy, yeah? Their view on Moussa Dembele – that we’ll sell him in the summer – appears to have a lot of people very excited. Apparently their opinion counts for more than the words of Brendan Rodgers and the player himself, both of whom have stated, for the record, that Moussa is going to be here a while, that Celtic was not a “stepping stone” choice, that he wants to become a top player here.
I couldn’t give a monkey’s either what Manchester United fans think of the idea of signing him. Or that their scouts were in Scotland this week. United have a number of young, quality forwards at their club already, but their supporters are so used to a team crammed full of top talent that they’ll never settle for signing their next striker from the SPL no matter how good he might be. As a filler option, perhaps, in their arrogance … but the player can do better.
Moussa Dembele will develop as a footballer only be being on the park. He’s playing Champions League football. The occasional run-out in the English League Cup or second string EPL matches against the likes of Hull and Stoke won’t make him the player he can be. It’s an insult to expect him to go from being a first team regular to that, but the English obsession with money has blinded them to some of the fundamentals. He’s past the point where he’s a mere squad player.
Manchester United’s decision to send scouts to watch him is perfectly valid, of course, but they made damned sure the media knew about it so it wasn’t an attempt to look at a footballer as much as it was an effort to unsettle one. Because only when a young player’s head has been turned and he’s demanding a move can you get him on the cheap.
The same applies to Kieran Tierney who the media has been trying to unsettle for months now, with invented nonsense about the likes of Manchester City and Arsenal. Don’t get me wrong, it’s flattering to have such attention lavished on our club by the big guns; sure as Hell nobody is rushing to Ibrox to watch Josh Windass and Martyn Waghorn, or nobody who you’d give premium seats to anyway, but still. It’s a drag. It’s a pain in the arse.
I’ve also got sick, pretty rapidly, of reading about the tug-of-war over young Karamoko Dembele. Again, it’s nice to know our youth side is winning respect but this is a kid, a 13 year old, and already the nonsense has started. Stewart Regan did us no favours this week by jumping into it and expressing his wish that the boy choose Scotland; we have no idea what we’ve got here yet and all this halfwits intervention has done is increase the hype and with it bring in the vultures. If this kid’s attitude is warped by all this pressure he’s another Islam Feruz, all potential and no follow through. If he’s allowed to develop without it, then we’ll see.
What’s Regan got to do with this anyway? Even if this kid is everything we hope for (and he’s years from where we’ll properly know that) he’s nearly a decade away from having to make a final decision about which national team he represents, and for Regan to be focussing any energy on hypothetical horizons so distant when there are pressing issues in the here and now tells you that this guy has the attention span of a gnat and follows the media like a dog after a bike trailing sausages.
Leave this kid be for a while, instead of surrounding him with this stuff. Let him make his own decisions, without pressure, without the subliminal hints that he’ll somehow be letting down the whole country if he makes the “wrong” decision. He’s barely in his teens; all this is just ludicrous and does nobody any favours.
Moussa will definitely be a top footballer; you can see it a mile away. The English clubs will be kicking themselves for not grabbing him when he was at Fulham. Tough luck.
When the offers come in they’ll need to start with eight figures or be laughed out the room, no matter what EPL arrogance dictates the market up here is worth because if we get the team balance right there’s little doubt this kid will have the Champions League stage all over again next year and then they’ll have to fight for him with clubs from all over the continent who aren’t intimidated by their fiscal insanity.
One day, of course, the media will get what it wants, be proved right, and they’ll try to present it as Celtic showing lack of ambition or the player opting to move where there’s more money. This screaming, this shrieking, they do about how top players don’t want to play in Scotland (except for those who come here) and will one day want a fresh challenge isn’t news. It’s not a new concept either; Dalglish, Nicholas and others have all headed south but what the hacks never mentions is that this happens to English clubs too, to most every club. Manchester United, at the height of their powers, couldn’t keep Cristiano Ronaldo. It’s the nature of the beast.
But this stuff is relentless, whenever we bring in a top player or start to get a settled look to the team. It’s offensive, and not only to us but to all of Scottish football. Barton the bigmouth found out how tough the game up here can be, it’s not the cakewalk some down south surmise. Moussa and Scott Sinclair haven’t been at Parkhead five minutes but they’re already being touted for a return ticket home, and you watch, all the nonsense about Brendan being a wanted man will be piping up before much longer, especially if he’s closing in on a treble.
You know, all this would be well and good if the same hacks weren’t constantly bemoaning our lack of quality up here. Yet they can’t seem to wait for the quality we do attract to piss off as soon as an English offer comes in.
Talk about talking down our national sport.
They just don’t know when to give it a rest, do they?