It rears its head again. It’s one of those summer rumours that refuses to die, no matter how many times you try to kill it.
Steven Fletcher is linked with a move north of the border, to the club he should have signed for a long time ago.
How long ago? He left Hibs at the end of Gordon Strachan’s fourth season, the one where Rangers won the first of three titles in a row, the last three they were ever to win. We lost out on signing Fletcher in January of that year for the sake of a few hundred grand.
Our problem all through that season was scoring goals.
Would Fletcher have made the difference and got us over the line?
I don’t know, but we call it the Wilo Flood window because we brought him in instead.
It’s surely not ridiculous to suggest that Fletcher would have been better.
For all that, he’s never been a natural goal-scorer in the way someone like Griffiths or Edouard is.
He’s never been one of those guys you could say would get you 30 goals a season. The most he’s ever managed in a season is actually around half of that; he scored 14 in his second to last season at Easter Road. His career average is a goal every 3.6 games.
What Fletcher would have done in that particular campaign is given our other strikers the rocket up their backsides which they evidently needed. He would also have given us a physical edge which we were desperately lacking. I reckon he’d have made a difference.
But back then, he was a 21 year old comer with it all in front of him.
Fletcher is now 33. His best years are behind him. I would see no merit in making a move for him now even if didn’t already have four strikers at the club.
I simply do not understand where this particular story has come from, or why it keeps rearing its head, but I cannot imagine that there is a single word of truth in it any more than reports linking us to Toney or the ridiculous ones about us “competing” with Sevco for Lyndon Dykes.
More and more, that particular story sounds to me like a piece of positive spin in case he winds up at Ibrox replacing Morelos.
There is precisely zero chance of Steven Fletcher winding up at Celtic Park as a player.
It would be ridiculous. It would be senseless.
I don’t know who keeps pushing this story into the public domain – the player, his agents, just people with nothing else to write about – but I do know that this was last a good idea over a decade ago and has been an annoyance ever since.
As Scottish football goes through the current crisis it is important to keep up with developments and the key issues. We are determined to do so, and to keep you informed as well. Please subscribe to the blog.