Sometimes writing about the Sevco fan sites feels like talking to small children, it really does. They understand part of what you are saying, depending on the tone you use. But the actual salient details are too much for them to comprehend.
Ibrox Noise is probably the barmiest, and most delusional website in the country. It writes about Sevco and issues peripheral to that club with no intelligence whatsoever. It is a blog written by people who take their deepest fantasy and then try to find ways to prove that it’s just around the corner, that the promised land looms.
Lately they’ve been writing about transfer fees.
As I said in an earlier article, this is about Virgil Van Dijk and whatever happens next with Dembele. There are also rumours that we’re going to get a mid-seven figure fee for Jozo Simunovic in this window. This concerns their supporters, and they are quite right to be concerned. It’s bad for them.
But we didn’t get here by accident. All of our players are thoroughly scouted, and very few of them were signed for nominal fees. We took advantage of one of the loopholes in cross-border transfers between Scotland and England to get Dembele as cheaply as we did, but most of these other guys cost us, and cost us big. When we realise profits for them that means the system worked as it was built to. But it wasn’t cheap to build, and it isn’t cheap to run.
Ibrox Noise believes that all we do in our transfer dealings is hold out for the price we want. It does not ask whether or not the values we’re talking about are realistic. It looks at the Dembele asking price – around £25 million if you believe the press – and sees it as a stupid money figure that we will only get by digging in our heels.
Moussa Dembele is a French Under 21 striker who was coveted by EPL clubs before going to Celtic Park. We have a history of finding gems and selling them on to teams down there. None has ever wasted the money. We didn’t luck into this. Dembele was an exceptional talent before he signed for us; that’s why we signed him in the first place. So too was Van Dijk. So was Wanyama. Everyone could tell Forster was a top class keeper.
When those players were sold the clubs who bought them knew what they were getting and they paid us what the market value of those players was. Ibrox Noise’s brainless writers appear to think the selling club decides that; they don’t and never have. It’s the buying clubs who decide what a guy’s valuation should be. They will only pay what the market supports.
Last week Ibrox Noise was touting Josh Windass, a player they have slated for months, as being worth £3.5 million … they would accept £2 million. His market value is probably closer to £300,000. No club will pay more than that. There are better players available for the kind of money this dopey website seems to think he’s worth.
Today it’s James Tavernier, another player they have slated on numerous occasions. Big of them, today they are saying “we were wrong, he’s actually brilliant” and are feigning reluctance to let him go. And for how much? Why only £5 million.
For a complete flop. For a guy every Sevco fan knows is a lousy defender. This guy they’d be very lucky to get £1 million for. Very lucky indeed. But the site is now demanding they “hold out”, using our Champions League striker and Dutch international Virgil Van Dijk as the benchmark, on the strength of how ridiculous transfer fees in England are.
English clubs may be insane, but they are not stupid and that’s what you would have to be to believe for even one minute that Windass is a multi-million player and that you could sell a crap right back who can’t even cut it in the SPL for mid seven figures.
If Tavernier was that, would they want to sell him at all?
These people are absolutely barking mad.
That website is a source of nothing but nonsense, and comic relief when Celtic fans are feeling under the weather.