One the things that infuriates me about this board of directors is their utter selfishness and the way they try to divert flak from themselves at every turn.
Yesterday was the worst possible day to bring a new signing to the club when the firestorm was still raging from Wednesday night.
It was a deflection tactic which robbed David Turnbull of his moment in the sun.
But you know what? David Turnbull didn’t care about that.
He was clearly delighted that the deal was finally done and he’s a Celtic player after 14 months of waiting to be able to say that. At a time when some players are scrambling for the exit this is a kid who couldn’t wait to get the Celtic strip on and be able to talk about what it’s like to sign.
And that, my friends, is the chink of light in an otherwise dark week.
David Turnbull is an excellent signing for our club, and he will go on to do big, big things for us. There is a real star quality to his game; this is not a footballer being signed to sit on the bench or wait for his turn to shine. He is better than that, and he’s proved it.
I’ll be honest; when we tried to sign him last year I couldn’t have picked him out on the street.
I knew he’d had a phenomenal season the year before, and that he was good on the ball and knew where the net was, but he was a Motherwell player and so I hadn’t seen enough of him to make a judgement one way or the other. Then I watched his highlights.
And what I found, of course, was that the kid has the stuff.
Not only is he a fine footballer going forward but he is cool under pressure, he can pass the ball and he works. He works damned hard. This is a key attribute in this Celtic team, and it’s the reason Christie gets such a good press even on those days when his creativity doesn’t spark something.
This was one of the issues I had with playing him up front, but the little discussed one. We missed his energy in the midfield. Lennon, as he did when he put McGregor at left back against Cluj, didn’t just weaken one area of the team but two on Wednesday night.
Turnbull is one of those footballers.
He would have brought something to the team on Wednesday; at the very least he’d have given us an option from the bench which Lennon’s team selection had denied us. In starting all of our attacking midfielders he limited our ability to make a game-changing substitution.
Turnbull is not coming to Celtic Park though to sit and wait for his chance.
This is another first-team capable signing; that’s what most frustrating about the game and the aftermath of it.
It came after we’d finally started to show some transfer market purpose, and although we are all screaming for the centre back we need the quality of the players we’ve secured so far has been very high, higher than the average window.
We’ll see what shakes loose over the next couple of weeks in regards the squad, but the signing of David Turnbull is a positive one whatever else may come.
This boy deserves his place in the sun, and having missed out on the fanfare that a better day than yesterday would have brought him, the least we can do is give him a starting berth against his former club.
Hopefully in his natural position as well …
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