I love a good transfer rumour.
It’s pretty easy to see why we’re not doing them at the moment.
If there are deals to be done they’ll only come when football itself is not such a long shot. As we don’t know when games are going to be played again, it seems crazy to be thinking about the buying and selling of footballers … but it is part of what we love.
Sitting here right now, looking out the window into a sunny day, it is almost impossible to believe that our world is literally upside down at the moment but it is and we all know it.
There’s a gnawing anxiety in all of us right now, an understanding that we’re in a bad spot and not getting out of it any time soon.
We’ve been evicted from our lives … there might be no going back to them for a while.
This is as bad as anything many of us have ever experienced.
Transfer stories are good because they anchor us to the idea that we will return to normal.
They anchor us to the idea that there will be more matches at some point, and that we’ll get to watch our team. They remind us that the business of football is about more than just the games; team building is an exercise in itself and it is ongoing right now.
The ones about players leaving are obviously bad. We don’t enjoy those.
There are plenty of them out there too; most of them revolve around Eddie. They are especially troubling because you can actually see circumstances in which the big guy might not fancy hanging around Scotland and the UK if we’re going to be months out and games are going on elsewhere.
But recently, we’ve had some positive rumours too. Patrick Roberts anybody?
Where the Hell did that story come from, and is there any truth in it?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Roberts has a new contract at City from the start of the last campaign, but most people accept – and the player himself certainly does – that he won’t kick a ball for them.
He hasn’t kicked a ball for anyone, really, in a while.
His career has never hit the heights it was supposed to, and Celtic would give him the place from which to rebuild it … he should have gone with that option instead of signing his new deal … I know that there was a good chance of it back then, and it would have been the best move for him.
Just thinking about this stuff again is good. I was delighted to read the Roberts story last week, and others in the last few days about us sniffing around a French footballer or two. That market has been good for us, and I hope we are serious about tapping back into it.
Things will return to normal, and we will once again see good players being paraded at Celtic Park in their new kits.
It might not happen soon, but I know that at Parkhead plans are already being laid for the next campaign.
I hope we have some actual transfer business to report in due course.
It will be the best possible thing for us.
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