This has been a night of strange stories, and whilst this is another bad news story on the surface of it, I’m not actually convinced that it’s as bad as all that. According to sources in France, Celtic have narrowly failed to sign central defender Christophe Hérelle or Nice.
He will sign for Brest instead, for around £4.6 million.
What makes it slightly more interesting is that the French have claimed that we were in the race right to the end, and that we came close to getting it done.
Sometimes these things happen. Maybe he had family issues and wanted to stay in France. Maybe their domestic game was more appealing to him. What the French outlets make clear is that he was not ruling us out and that the final decision came late.
This would be a reversal, except that none of us knew it was happening.
That suggests that there is hard work going on behind the scenes, and since we’ve seen us make moves for as many as four targets in the forward position, and as we clearly had options the moment Forster made it clear he wasn’t returning, so too you’d think we do have other central defensive choices and we would certainly have moved onto the next on the list.
One of my criticisms of earlier was the focus on forwards, when it’s clear that it’s the backline which is most need of boosting.
Well I am relieved that those inside Celtic see that clearly and were acting on it in private. We’ve seen in the last day or two that the media really doesn’t have much clue what’s going on inside the clubs, and it’s no surprise they never had a sniff here.
I am encouraged for the first time today.
This would have been a move for a decent player and for some decent money, in the position which scares us all most.
We might have failed, but we were in there, we were busy, we made the effort.
That’s a step in the right direction.
I am more encouraged tonight.
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