Once again, Brendan Rodgers has had to state Celtic’s utter opposition to any club that thinks it has a chance of signing Moussa Dembele in the January window. This, surely, will bring an end to needless, tedious, weeks of rumour and speculation, right?
No I don’t think so either, but it is good to hear Brendan laying the facts out there nonetheless, and when it comes to this one he couldn’t have been more emphatic if he tried. Not only do Celtic not need to sell, but if the day ever comes when the player wants to go, there’s no chance of him being allowed to leave on the cheap.
We’ll get what the player is worth, not some value relative to the league we are in.
The player has just won a prestigious award. Interest in him is sky high. It terrifies the hacks that we will net a genuine pot of gold for this kid one day. That’s why there are always people trying to downgrade the final number, even going as far as to slate the standard of the league we’re in.
This is but one avenue of attack the media and others have been keen to use against us. Indeed, any number of the village idiots of Ibrox have been trotted out over the last few months to tell us all that there’s no point in hoping that, when Moussa does leave, we’ll get “pie in the sky” money for him. “We play in Scotland,” goes the argument. “Clubs won’t pay that for players here.”
This argument can be easily, readily, dismissed and not just because of the sums Celtic has already been paid for players in the past couple of years. There’s another example, from the distant past, and it bears a little bit of scrutiny.
Jean Alain Boumsong and his move from Rangers to Newcastle, in 2005.
According to the Transfer Price Index – which adjusts the value of transfer deals based on the average at the time, and taking into account inflation – his £8 million sale to Newcastle would have generated £17 million in today’s cash. If anything, this proves that the mega-deals which took Forster, Van Dijk and Wanyama to England were gross undersells, rather than offering a ceiling on the “market value” for players in Scotland.
There is no such thing. The market decides what a player is worth, not some arbitrary nonsense about where he plays his football. It’s all about potential, and those who say Moussa can’t “prove” his worth in Scotland are ignoring that Wayne Rooney transferred from Everton to Old Trafford whilst just a kid, having proved nothing except potential, for a deal which the TPI says would today be worth a mind-bending £95.3 million.
That’s a number that’s hard to ignore, and a precedent that’s worth bearing in mind. No-one’s saying Moussa will go for a sum like that, but those stuck on numbers around £12 million are having a laugh. The current market rate puts his value far in excess of that.
Brendan put it thus:
“We don’t want to or need to sell anyone. Gone are the days when someone’s going to look at the Scottish market and think ‘We’ll get someone out of Celtic because it’s Scottish football. A talent is a talent and, without being arrogant, I know what it looks like – world class players. I had a kid I put in the team at 17 (Raheem Sterling) and he left Liverpool for £49 million. That was a winger. There are other examples.”
How clear can he be? Those who are interested in the player – and it won’t be allowed in January or, I suspect, in the summer – better get their cheque books out and get real with the numbers. Neither he nor Celtic is kidding around on this one; we know what we’ve got here, and nobody’s kidding themselves about how this will end either.
“I understand there will be a point when something natural happens. A player might not want to leave but there’s a pot of money on the other side that takes them to 70, 80, 90 grand a week. That’s not showing a lack of ambition, that’s about having a moral obligation,” he said.
“How can we hang onto a player that can get that? That player will move. It’s our job, my job to protect the club and the talent we have. Having worked at a level where I know what the numbers look like and what’s paid, irrespective of what league we’re in, I know what the value of that player is. Celtic will never have to worry about having to lose anyone for a sum of money that’s not relative to the talent.”
And that’s the killer phrase “a sum of money not relative to the talent.”
That, and that alone, is what will decide the final transfer fee, when it comes.
In the meantime, we’ll enjoy the show, and he’ll keep on doing the damage in the big games. He might be slightly off the boil at the moment, but who wants to bed he’ll be gunning for Sevco at the end of the month?