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The Ntcham “New Contract” Is A Sticking Plaster Over This Open Wound Window.

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How lucky we are, folks. How very, very fortunate.

As this car-crash transfer window threatens to slam down on our fingers, the board has thrown us a bone, like alley-dwellers being tossed some restaurant left-overs which even the dog won’t touch. An ex-Killie midfielder is reported to be ready to sign; he’s been without a club for a month. Was he our last option or were we his? Doesn’t really matter.

I’ll get to him later, if and when the deal is done.

Our other piece of good news is that Olivier Ntcham is being offered a new deal. Excuse me if I’m not all bells and whistles over that. This is supposed to reassure us that the club has ambitions beyond the here and now, that it is forward thinking.

Instead I see a pathetic piece of gesture politics, designed to win over a handful of fans who will pretend not to notice that the guy only signed for us last year and is already being linked with a move away. A new contract won’t bind him to us, of course; the chances are good that if there’s an offer next summer he’s offski.

It’s posturing, then. It’s window dressing, a sticking plaster slapped on a gaping wound. Our credibility, our standing, our ambition is seeping out around the edges, like puss. The board is basically telling us that we’ve been grafted, conned into buying a bag of sh@te.

But that’s okay because hey, someone’s slipped a sweetie in there too.

I expect Ntcham to be sold next summer if not sooner.

The fraudulent nature of this “contract offer” doesn’t even try to hide what’s coming down the road at us.

This is Celtic right now. A club that takes its supporters for mugs. Even if we were, the manager is not a mug and he knows exactly what all this is in aid of. He’s been lied to more than any of us and I don’t blame him that he’s very obviously telegraphing his exit when this campaign is done. No manager who says “you can’t build anything here” will be sticking around to prove the theorem; his mind is made up, and probably because of the last 36 hours.

But aren’t we lucky? Aren’t we fortunate?

We were promised that none of our marquee players would be sold in this window.

That was a barefaced lie.

But no worries; be assured that we’re not selling all of them. 

This is Celtic.

The club with the best floodlights in the SPL.

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