Articles

£6 Million For Stuart Armstrong? At The Moment, That Sounds About Right.

|
Image for £6 Million For Stuart Armstrong? At The Moment, That Sounds About Right.

News has broken today that Southampton have inquired about Stuart Armstrong and they’ve been quoted a fee of £6 million. Normally I would dismiss this kind of stuff as tittle-tattle but there appears to be no real prospect of Armstrong staying at the club.

Nothing is official of course; this remains purely speculation. But you can’t read the runes without seeing clearly where this is going. Armstrong is going to leave, and we’re going to have make sure it’s in this window. But even with that knowledge pretty much on the record, and an irrefutable fact, we’re not going to let him go on the cheap.

Once we would have gotten an eight figure sum for Armstrong.

Last season, teams were talking about offering £8 million and that’s only where the bidding would have started. But he’s been injured, and then he was out of the team and those things have driven down the sales price to the point where £6 million is probably a realistic assessment of what we can get for him. It’s dire to be honest, because if he was playing in England we could have asked for £15 million and probably would have got it without the buyers even blinking.

Right now Armstrong does not justify that kind of fee, and that’s why it was always more likely to be a Southampton who came in that one of the bigger clubs. Van Dijk could have gone anywhere. Wanyama was clearly on a trajectory towards a massive side and he will move again from Spurs to somewhere even better. I think someone like Dembele could go straight from Celtic Park to a top team … that was never the case with Stuart.

In football terms, Stuart Armstrong is still at the foot of the learning curve.

He’s a smart guy and he knows that himself. He wants to better himself and he believes that means moving to England, but he doesn’t see football as the be-all-and-end-all of his existence. His law degree will stand him in good stead down the line. Football trophies and being part of our continuing success isn’t what motivates him. He’s leaving for more money and we should be upfront about that and not afraid to say it. And fair play to him for it; it’s a short career.

I will wish him well when he goes. I hope he does well wherever he winds up, but my overwhelming feelings about Stuart Armstrong will be of disappointment. He has not been the player I’d hope for nor taken the club to his heart like I imagined he would. He is a Celtic fan, and I just assumed when he was signed that we would be watching a future captain.

It wasn’t to be. Just a few seasons after signing, and after a protracted “will he, won’t he?” contract saga last summer, which left a bitter taste and had people questioning his overall commitment to the cause, this looks like being the end.

We won’t get for him what we would have but £6 million or thereabouts will ease the pain of losing a decent footballer.

It will certainly be reinvested in the team.

Share this article