Tonight, a curiosity on the news sites. Preston’s alleged bid for Josh Windass has more than doubled in value from the £200,000 which was being mooted this morning to a £500,000 bid tonight. We are actually supposed to believe not only that Preston offered half a million pounds for this joker but that the club turned it down.
Frankly, Mark Allen would be fired for rejecting such a bid.
The club would take Alex Neil’s hand off to get that sort of money for him, because he isn’t worth a half that.
Windass is so hated by majority of the Sevco fans that they consider their team a man down whenever he features in it. Successive managers have desperately scrambled to find a position for him, but to no avail. He is as useless as a chocolate tea-pot; it is a mark of how bad they are that he gets in the team.
The club is apparently holding out for a larger fee; reports from England tonight suggest that this move has backfired massively, with Preston not so much walking away as running in the other direction; Alex Neil probably has a hand clapped over his face to hold in the giggles.
They are supposed to be similarly holding out for big money for Tavernier; a nonsense to those who have actually watched him play football.
As I said earlier, the Sevco sites are now putting intense pressure on their club to try and get “value” for money in their transfer dealings, as Celtic reap the big money rewards of our policies in this area. They are adamant that Barrie McKay was sold too cheaply; I agree, particularly when you see what they spent the money they got for him on.
But he was never a £6 million player as the more nonsensical reports suggested and neither is Morelos a player for whom they will get big money, in spite of the glorious fantasies to that end which they have been spinning themselves. He’s probably a £2 million player at most, if they are very, very lucky in the negotiating, and they won’t because every club down there knows the most important thing of all; they are skint and desperate.
See, this is one of the reasons we can ask for – and get – big money for our top players.
If clubs want to do business with us they have to start with the knowledge that we have no need to sell anyone. We will only do so when the price is right. That gives us a decisive advantage, which Sevco simply cannot come close to having.
It helps if the quality is good too, of course, which in our case it is.
The guys we’ve sold in recent years were Champions League footballers, title winners. Windass and Tavernier have got their last two managers the sack. Pena, Herrera and others have contributed nothing since being signed in the summer. The media can do its level best to bum up their values – and they are trying, believe me – but club chairmen do talk to each other and scouts do watch players before they pay good money for them.
Sevco leads its fans on constantly, and they believe in the worst kind of nonsense. If they really are going to fall into this particular black hole of over-expectation – and if their club lets them – then Hell mend everyone involved.