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Rod Petrie Thinks He’s a Funny Guy. I Wonder If Hibs’ Shareholders Are Laughing.

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It’s a strange football chairman who would hamstring his manager by turning down a generous bid for one of his soon-to-be out of contract players for reasons that are more personal than business and do it all with a smile.

But he was smiling yesterday coming out of the SPFL meeting when the press collared him on the subject of John McGinn.

He’s enjoying himself immensely on this one. He’s enjoying blocking off Celtic’s transfer plan. Neil Lennon won’t be quite so keen, as this is going to cost him a chunk of change for buying new players. I also wonder whether Hibs’ shareholders are pleased about it.

It is the fiduciary duty of the chairman to do his best for the other shareholders.

There is no question that McGinn will leave Hibs at the end of the coming campaign. He may even leave in January. Petrie’s job is to secure the best possible outcome for the club. Is this it? Is the potential loss of a reputed £2 million really a small price to pay for thwarting us temporarily?

Had he been willing to deal in good faith on behalf of his club I have no doubt that we’d have thrown in a player as well … that’s not going to happen now, by the looks of it, and so Lennon and the club have lost out twice.

Petrie had hoped there would be English interest by now.

Unfortunately for him, McGinn is not nearly well known enough down there for a club to offer them what Celtic already has. And even if some club did pop up at the moment and make such a bid, it’s likely to be one that McGinn – seeing Celtic looming – would have no interest whatsoever in joining.

And that will make him dig his heels in.

We all know how this story ends, and it doesn’t end with Rod Petrie still sniggering away like he’s the only person in the world who gets the joke. We get the joke. It’s pretty clear that it’s on Neil Lennon and the Hibs fans and the Hibs shareholders, whatever he might think to the contrary. If this bid was from anyone else McGinn would already be gone … but Petrie is playing his little game, as this blog said he would, because it is Celtic.

You only have to look at the way he’s conducted this whole affair. When he set the price at £3 million I was arguing that we should pay it, or get close to it with cash plus a player, the better just to end the saga and get the deal done … but the moment we started edging towards the kind of sum he’d have been under real internal pressure to accept he shifted the goalposts, demanded another £1 million and made it clear what he was about.

Hibs will never get £4 million for John McGinn. Not now. Not ever.

In fact, at this moment, they stand to net exactly zero for him. He will sign a pre-contract agreement in January and they will be lucky if we give them the courtesy of a nominal fee to take him at once. This will cost them, and it will cost St Mirren too who have the right to part of the cash. Some say that’s what Petrie is bothered about, but if so he’s an idiot if he thinks that holding out for a sum that will never materialise is the way to fix this.

He has gotten himself into a situation all of his own making. The English window shuts shortly, and the club’s decision to play McGinn in their Europa League qualifiers means we have no incentive to sign him before then. When that window shuts there goes Petrie’s last hope of finding a buyer other than Celtic. We don’t need McGinn for European football, so any bid that we make after the English window closes will probably be lower than the one we just did.

The bottom line is that Celtic will win here. McGinn will be a Celtic player, it is just a matter of when it happens. There is no doubt about this, and Petrie’s little game is not going to secure him extra money but the loss of what’s already on the table.

And he finds this all so amusing.

I wonder who else in Easter Road does. Not many, I’d think.

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