This week, Virgil Van Dijk is expected to move from Southampton.
His destination will be one of several clubs who’ve been sniffing around him for a while. He was a class footballer whilst at Celtic, and you could tell he had great potential. His departure came too soon, but it made us a lot of money and when he leaves his current club we’re going to make more.
The transfer fees being mooted for him are enormous.
He’s going to join the EPL jet-set and become a seriously wealthy individual, on a contract which could be worth as much £5 million a year. Ridiculous, if you ask me, but I wouldn’t turn it down and he won’t either. T
hat’s money to keep you and yours in perpetuity; let Sky worry about how clubs can afford it, and let everyone down there worry about what happens when they no longer can.
Because, clearly, wages and transfer fees cannot keep rising down there forever. There’s got to a ceiling, a point beyond which the TV companies will no longer go, beyond which fans will no longer buy into it all, beyond which the notion that a football club is made of many constituent parts which all work as one, instead of being a mercenary money printing organisation which benefits a select few, will no longer be sustainable.
We’re in the era of obscene £100,000 a week salaries, whilst the bulk of this country gets by on an average median wage which is a quarter of that annually. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start singing the blues and advocating socialism in our time, I’m simply making a point. Football fans aren’t “part” of that circus down there any longer. The link between communities and their clubs was broken the second this rampant greed became everything.
If we assume though that the market dictates value, then in this overblown bubble of a market Virgil is worth every penny. And for now that works for us.
We’re likely to net around £5 million from this deal. It’s big. It’s a very hefty sum for doing nothing more than having the foresight to put a clause in a contract of sale. That is more money than every other club in the SPL will spend, combined, unless King really is going to piss the season ticket money his club requires just to meet running costs against the wall … and then God help them. I find that unlikely, as it would be sheer madness.
That £5 million is going to top the lot.
So what should we spend it on?
One obvious suggestion would be the one we’ve spent a long while discussing on here; Patrick Roberts.
No-one would complain if the cash went on him.
No-one would complain if it went on a quality defender or a winger from elsewhere.
As it’s “extra cash” and won’t matter to the manager’s transfer fund then perhaps spending it out-with the playing squad would be the best all-round idea; £5 million invested in infrastructure can pay a lot of dividends in the long haul. That would be a very decent move indeed.
After all, we have hotels and bars to build in the Celtic Triangle and you can see already that the outside of the ground and the surrounding area has never looked better. That’s a credit to how much we’ve invested in it over the years.
A name has popped up on the transfer radar today – Victor Fischer of Middlesborough, who they signed from Ajax. He had a very promising pedigree but a spell in England has knocked him back a few stages. Nevertheless, he’s only 22 and still has a lot to offer.
Stuart Armstrong should certainly get a chunk of the cash. That would be a good thing to spend it on. His contract negotiations have been in limbo for a while now, and I know the manager was holding off on them until the season was done. It is. Time to get him signed up.
Overall, the dilemma is a nice one to have.
I’d be interested in hearing what your own suggestions are.