One of the things that pleases me most about doing this job – and which annoys me at the same time haha – is the number of people who send me stuff and ask for my take on it. No sooner had I hit publish on the transfer window article than someone sent me Frank McAvennie’s latest “exclusive” to see what I thought of it.
The answer is, not much.
Here is an ex-Celtic player who now makes his living on the fringes of the media, working with the purveyors of clickbait and fanciful guff. This guy has no connections to Celtic at all except for having been a former player. He retains no “in” with the coaching staff, management team or the players.
He is, in effect, nothing more than a celebrity fan.
They are the worst kind, because they’ve realised that there is money to be made in promoting their own opinions, however ignorant, as if they were “informed.” McAvennie doesn’t have the first clue what is happening inside Parkhead and he proved it again here.
His “exclusive” – which contains not one piece of actual information – is that he reckons there will be a major shakeup at Celtic next month. With many players – top players – leaving and others coming in.
He appears not to understand what is known to everyone who is involved in football; January is the absolute wrong time to try and rebuild a squad.
Indeed, it’s never been done, anywhere, during the course of that window.
Because, and this will be hard for him to believe, there are clubs playing for things at this time of year and they don’t want to let go of their best players. So even if we bucked the overall trend we wouldn’t be able to replace half of the guys we’ve got to put up a title fight.
Lennon has explicitly ruled this course of action out, not that he had to as it was obvious to any sane person that we wouldn’t be attempting this sort of thing during a window where business slows down to a crawl and there are more rumours than actual stories.
McAvennie wraps it up by saying this is what he would do; I daresay it is, but this isn’t Football Manager, this is actual football management and people in that business try to behave sanely, and especially when the next signpost along the highway is for season ticket renewals … which will be hard enough if we lose the league with a full strength team but will be impossible, absolutely impossible, if we’ve sold top stars and then are seen to blow it.
McAvennie couldn’t be more further removed from this story or from the reality of where we are at the moment.
The thing is, a lot of people read this stuff and assume that he does have some inside knowledge …
I don’t know whether they’ll be disappointed or glad when they find out how little has and how little he actually knows.
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