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How Could Celtic “Pull Out” Of The Race For A Player We Were Never Interested In? This Is Our Summer.

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I hate clickbait sites and I hate commenting on them. You know the ones I mean, the ones which publish every rumour and recycle every tired story out there. One of them is running a story today which suggests that we “pulled out” of a move for Ryan Shawcross at Stoke and this one is worth exploring because it gives me a chance to talk about something that bothers me and which, I’m sure, will bother all of us in the course of this close-season.

This story is just clickbait nonsense, about how we’re no longer in the running because we no longer appear on a certain bookie’s shortlist of likely clubs …

I mean, how “non-story” can you get?

But it does bring me to a place where I can talk about this bugbear of mine, and we’re bound to see it once or twice as this summer rolls on.

Do you notice how Sevco is never “snubbed” and how they never “fail to get their man”? I mocked Chris Jack the other day over his regurgitation of a club PR statement, when they said they had never been interested in Martin Skrtel only for the player’s own agent to say “yes, they were but we knocked them back over their derisory offer.”

But that’s how these things are generally spun; Sevco simply “moves on to other targets.” Celtic “fails” to get theirs. The narrative is already being established, and if not in today’s story you can bet it will be out there in others.

For instance, where’s the proof we were ever interested in Shawcross in the first place? Well that’s hard to come by, since the writer of the article appears to be basing the whole thing on how, at one point, one UK bookie made us “second favourites” to sign him and now we’re not.

Based on what? Who knows?

Based, it seems, on Celtic being in the market for a defender and Shawcross being … errr … a defender. And a bookie deciding to offer odds on it.

That appears to be the link.

Honestly, this will get tiring long before this summer ends but not every story will be as benign as this. Many of those stories will be accompanied by a tale about how we were “snubbed” or “rejected” or “turned down” … it all amounts to the same thing, of course.

And 99% of it will have not the slightest basis in fact.

It gets this way because unlike some clubs, who cannot live without news stories linking them with this player or that one, we don’t do things via the media. We do them via their clubs and via the proper channels.

If we had been interested in Ryan Shawcross not only would we never have known about the interest until the thing was just about done, but of course, the world would never have known if we’d pulled out of the bidding either.

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