Everyone knows that Celtic is looking for a fourth striker, and whilst a lot of other positions have taken precedence in our early planning that’s simply a reflection of the reality of our situation; we needed those guys in place first.
Indeed, until we bring in a right back the plans still aren’t as progressed as we’d want them to be.
The club is still a way away from a place where we can say we are stronger overall. Yet the signs are promising and the progress has been much quicker, and better, than many of us initially foresaw. The club is willing to go the extra mile this time.
So whilst we might not be pushing forward on the striker front just yet, Lennon will have it at the forefront of his thoughts, as he should. When he spoke shortly after getting the job he identified it as the key priority going forward; in fact, he said it would be the area where he saw himself spending the most money.
If he’s sticking to that then in spite of the Jullien signing and the fee, we’ve not seen our biggest single chunk of spending yet.
But there are options out there for whom we’d not have to break the bank. I enjoy researching these kind of articles, and this one was an eye opener. There is a lot of quality out there, and some of these guys are going to be absolute stars of the future.
England, Spain, Holland, Italy, France and Germany – leagues where the scouting is just about fool proof – require clubs to go in hard and fast in order to snap up the emerging talent. We did well getting Dembele and Odsonne Edouard.
France, in particular, has proved to be a happy hunting ground … we will certainly return to it time and time again.
But for the most part, the established players in these leagues are just too expensive.
That’s why many of these will be guys you’ve not heard of yet … but who Celtic’s scouting department will almost certainly know about. These are all realistic options – no flights of fancy here, folks – and thus the kind of players we could afford and who would come.
These are the striking options Celtic cannot afford to miss.
Jean-Pierre Nsame: The Golden Boy Of Berne.
The Cameroon born striker started his career in France, where so many great footballers in the modern age have plied their trade. He was a youth footballer at Angers, and was a real sensation in their youth side, being promoted to the first team squad.
There were two loan spells for him during that time, and he came on leaps and bounds.
The French club lost him to Servette in Switzerland.
There, he was a standout. He played so well for them that Young Boys of Berne came in at the end of the campaign and snapped him up.
The move turned out to be a good one. With him up front, in 2017-18, the club won its first title in 32 years. He continued that fine form last season.
He is a player with bags of talent, and at 6’1 he is a physical presence. It is a matter of time before he either returns to France or moves to Germany or somewhere his talents can continue to grow. He is 26, and nearing the peak of his powers.
He would easily be affordable, as Swiss football prices are not known for being majorly high.
Adrián Dalmau: The Predator From Palma.
Adrian Dalmau started his career at Real Madrid, coming through their youth setup before moving to Rayo Vallecano, prior to starting the kind of career game of follow the bouncing ball from which a lot of players do not come back.
He cycled through Zamoro, Racing Ferrol, Espanyol, Numancia and Mallorca before winding up at Villarreal, where he played mainly for their B team.
And yet … throughout those restless, ever moving, years he showed that he had something. He scored goals, and it was a matter of time before a club gave him a permanent berth in the first team squad and he showed what he could actually do on the big stage.
Enter Dutch club Heracles Almelo, who snatched him from his native Spain and made him the fulcrum of their attacking side last season, a side which finished 7th in the Eredivisie in the last campaign, in no small part as a result of his activities in front of goal.
He would cost more than some of the guys on this list, but a season honing his craft at a good level has turned him into the kind of footballer who might be well worth the investment on.
He has spent too long bouncing around; at 25 he would be a perfect player to offer a long term project to.
At Celtic he could continue to grow … and we’d get a top footballer.
Nikolay Komlichenko: From Russia With Goals. Lots Of Them.
Komlichenko is a phenomenal goal-scorer and even as I write this rumours circle him about big money interest from Turkey. The fee would be a mere £3 million, and that’s chump change for a guy who’s only 24 and who has already blasted scoring records all to Hell.
At Russian club Krasnodar’s B team he was one of the most prolific strikers in Russian youth football, frequently driving a wrecking ball through the opposition.
His 6’3 frame makes him an excellent choice in a striker system, and a perfect target man for a two man setup up front.
The Russians allowed him to leave for the Czech league, for reasons passing all understanding, and after a brief loan spell at Slovan Liberec he moved, on a permanent deal, to Mladá Boleslav last season, and quickly, effortlessly, began finding the back of the net.
Last season he shattered the record for the most goals of any player in a single season in that league, and with their campaign already underway this season he has been even more impressive; his average there is astounding, almost a goal per game.
It is a matter of time before this guy winds up at a top club.
He will be a bargain wherever he lands, and the goals are certain to follow.
Mbwana Samatta: The Terror From Tanzania.
This guy is going to go all the way in the game.
His record makes that clear. He has scored goals for fun wherever he has been, and already knows how to do the job at a high level, with a lot of pressure on him. When TP Mazembe won the CAF Champions League in 2015 it was with him as their key front man. He scored in the clinching tie and was the top scorer in the tournament.
His record at that club was quite amazing, and it was a matter of time before someone in Europe snapped him up. And as with a lot of top African players, his destination was Belgium, where he currently plays for Genk, where he’s been for four years.
And those four years culminated, last season, in a phenomenal scoring run where he scored 20 league goals in 28 games and added another 9 in Europe, finishing the season overall with 32 goals in 51 games. There is interest in him this summer, of course, and we would have to be swift if we were going to add him to the squad … at 26 he’s ripe for the life-changing move.
Aside from a club career where he has scored more than 160 goals in a little over 300 appearances, he also has 17 goals for the Tanzanian national side.
Somebody is going to get a bargain on this guy.
English clubs have been sniffing – Villa and Middlesborough were both interested and still are.
Ricardo Gomes: The Cape Verde Late Bloomer.
Born in Cape Verde, Gomes played much of his career in Portugal, and at 27 is now on the radar of some big clubs, after a superb season outside of his native land at Partizan Belgrade, where he finished last season with 26 goals.
And yet, this guy’s career might have been over, relegating him to the league of also-rans after a quite incredible season in Portugal where he signed for Nacional Madeira and played his first top-flight campaign without scoring a single goal.
The club was relegated that season, and they would have been forgiven for cutting their losses there and then on him. Forgiven, but completely wrong. He has already proved he could score goals, and it was a matter of time before he started to.
He finished the following season with 21 goals, the most of any player in the Portuguese second tier, and helped his side to promotion at the first time of asking. Partizan had taken note and they took a chance on him, and it paid off in spades.
His superb debut season there has sparked interest in him, and in fact Scottish fans might get a chance to see him soon enough anyway; his team lies in wait for Kilmarnock in the Europa League if they get through their first qualifier against Welsh minnows Connah’s Quay Nomads.
Celtic scouts should be watching that game with great interest.
Others definitely will be.
Andraž Šporar: Brilliance From Bratislava.
Andraž Šporar is a 25 year old Slovenian striker who has played most of his career in his native land … and he has been scoring goals the whole time. Starting out at NK Interblock, he quickly moved to Olimpija Ljubljana where he settled in nicely and began to score regularly.
Then, something went wrong. A move to Basel turned into a nightmare, where in his first full campaign he scored just once. A loan moan to Germany didn’t go much better, and just like that he was back in his homeland again, signing for Slovan Bratislava.
And what a signing he turned out to be for them, with his first full season ending with 26 goals in 28 matches, including 5 goals in Europe. Those goals helped his club to a title. On top of that, he has cemented his place in the national side.
The collapse of his form in Switzerland might suggest that he doesn’t travel well, but this move wouldn’t exactly cost us the Earth, and he has shown enough in his early career to suggest that he knows where the net is. He is another 6’0 plus guy and so would provide us with the physical threat that we presently lack up front.
Other clubs are paying attention, and soon they’ll start to hover.
Another season like the last one, and we won’t see this guy for dust.
He’ll wind up in Germany or France or some English club will take a punt and then we’ll get to watch what might have been.
Robert Skov: The King Of Copenhagen.
Robert Skov has to be on Celtic’s target list.
We know we watched his Copenhagen team-mate Peter Ankersen as a right back target, so if our scouts didn’t also flag the performances of this powerful striker who, last season, broke the record for most goals in a single season in the Danish league I will be absolutely astounded.
He is 23. He is 6’1.
He just won his first national cap for the Danish team after having a goal every two games ratio for their Under 21’s. This was the season he exploded onto the national scene at home, although his name was known to Danish football fans for his excellent record at Silkeborg before he moved to his current club.
He is developing into a major talent, and one who will almost certainly not be in Danish football for much longer.
Clubs from around Europe are already on high alert, with Spurs and Wolves already heavily linked with moves for him.
West Ham and Watford were interested too.
The attention of Premiership sides means that we would, in all likelihood, be priced out of a move if they were serious and made their pitch … we would have to move quickly and we would have to be prepared to spend.
He, above all other players on this list, would not be cheap.
But at such a young age you can already see that he possesses a tremendous re-sale value, and he and Celtic would be a perfect fit for each other.
Luka Zahovi?: Maribor’s Portuguese Born Rising Star.
Luka Zahovi? was born in Portugal, but in fact is of Slovenian descent and plays for their national team.
His youth career started at Valencia before it took him to Benfica, and then to his native land for his first professional contract with Maribor.
He was did well for a youth player there, and it was a matter of time before he got his first move, to Dutch club Heereveen.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t remotely ready for that and he drifted whilst there and after his first, unsatisfactory, season he was back at Maribor on loan.
There, he quickly settled in to his goal-scoring and they made the move permanent in 2017, with a contract that runs to next season. He was the league’s top scorer in the last campaign, and the player is once again growing in confidence and looking the part.
He is 23, which means that he’s nowhere near his peak yet. He would likely cost a sum in the low millions, which means it’s not even that big a risk.
His Dutch disaster aside – every player has one spell in his career which ends like that – he has proved he can play.
A move to a bigger club, in a bigger league, is just a matter of time.
Kemar Roofe: Just For The LOL’s
Earlier in the week, when the story broke about how the Ibrox club was looking at Leeds boy Kemar Roofe as a possible replacement for Morelos – in the highly unlikely event that they get an “acceptable” offer for the Mad Dog of Ibrox I couldn’t help but laugh.
First, the fee seemed ludicrous to me; a mere £5 million for a kid who’s already got the eyes of the EPL on him? I think not. Besides, the idea that the Ibrox club is ever going to spend that on a single player, no matter what they get for their dreck, is simply not tenable.
One idiotic report even said he’s had his “head turned” by a massive contract at Ibrox … funny as the clubs haven’t been in contact and the Ibrox side doesn’t have the cash to pay a transfer fee. Quite how the player can have been blown away by the idea is not something the article bothered to explain.
It has already been dismissed as “agent talk.”
In fact, it’s clearly just fantasy land nonsense.
But I like the guy and think he’s got a lot of potential.
And since he is out of contract at the end of the season – which would account for that extremely low transfer figure – and if talk of a move to Ibrox really has got him seeing pound signs (Poundland signs, someone should tell him that) then why would a move to a far bigger, far richer, club be out of the question?
Just one problem; he’s not really a striker, but an inside forward. And he’s 26, which means that a four year deal would give us virtually no re-sale value on him. But out wide he is a terror, and of that there is no doubt, with pace and power and an eye for goal.
It is ridiculous to suggest that a guy who’ll have serious interest from elsewhere and would cost more than the Ibrox club could reasonably ever afford would wind up there … but he has the tools to be a fine footballer at the right club.
He would be a fine signing at that sort of money.
Come on Celtic, we’ve got the cash. We’d be getting a good player … and a whole lot of laughs.
The Rumour Guy is a Celtic fan and blogger with a taste for internet research which he doesn’t get paid enough (anything) for.
