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£10 Million For Edouard? Where Does The Media Get This Nonsense From?

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Today The Sun is pumping out a double dose of nonsense. First, one report suggests that Skrtel is going to join Sevco for £2.7 million and wages that would give a Chase Manhattan broker a nosebleed and another which suggests that Celtic will have to shatter our transfer record within 10 days if we want to sign Odsonne Edouard.

Did the SPL become the EPL when I wasn’t looking or something?

Last month, when Edouard went from being a player the media was vaguely aware of to being one they could no longer ignore, after he scored his fantastic goal at Ibrox, Brendan Rodgers sat down in front of the hacks and took questions on the player. We have a fee that is set in stone. It was agreed before he ever signed for the club as a loanee. It’s contracted. And for a while the media was writing that it was set at £7 million.

Which Brendan Rodgers said was not accurate. He said that the fee was not in that ballpark. Did people actually sit at that press conference and think he meant that it was higher? PSG are about to be hammered under FFP rules. They know they are not going to get an eight figure sum of money for an under 20 player who has never made a first team appearance.

I cannot remember there ever being a more obvious and apparent air of make believe about the coverage of football in our media.

If Sevco buys Martin Skrtel people are entitled to ask where the money is coming from, and Sevco fans most of all, not that they will. It would be an insane piece of business for an SPL club to pay that kind of money for someone at that age and to give him a three-year deal and a whopper of a contract. The media hasn’t even asked how it would be paid for.

Likewise, if Celtic pay £10 million for Edouard that would be a decisive break from our stated policies going back years. Neither story is grounded in realism far less sanity.

Celtic have opened talks with PSG. We spoke with Odsonne’s agent at the weekend. The wheels are in motion. The Sun is trying to create a story where none exists. Celtic don’t need some hack at a third rate bog-roll maker to tell us what the schedule is, I’m sure we’re well aware of the timeline and what we have to do in it. There’s no “rush to complete the deal.” Celtic doesn’t do that. We have everything perfectly under control.

The Silly Season has well and truly started now.

What I didn’t realise is that we are already in the Mad Dogs Left Too Long In The Heat Season.

But clearly that’s where we are.

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