There are many ways to “test the resolve” of a football club, but none of them involves drip-feeding information to the media about bids that you “might” make at another time. None of them involves telling the media what you aren’t prepared to pay.
It’s a bit like being threatened by a Rottweiler with foam teeth.
For the second time in a week now, Italian clubs have been linked with moves for Celtic’s players.
For the second time in a week their version of “negotiating” is to tell the press what they aren’t willing to pay – which just happens to be Celtic’s alleged asking price.
For the second time in a week this is a story going nowhere.
The first was about Eddie. This one is about Frimpong. Ajer will be next, I suspect.
Which version of “testing our resolve” is this, that doesn’t involve an actual offer?
That starts with a gratuitous insult and that comes in a window where the asking price itself is a non-starter because we’ve said already that we’re not selling anyone?
I hate transfer windows these days because they just fill up with this stuff.
There are four days to go of this year and I am dreading the end of it because then we’re straight into a month of this.
Gerrard will tell the media his players aren’t for sale and the media will leave them alone until they can write one of those “mega bid turned down” pieces which is supposed to convince us that what’s in the Ibrox accounts isn’t really there at all.
It doesn’t matter how many times our manager or club says that players aren’t for sale; indeed, they’ve said it several times already.
Our players will be reading about interested clubs all the way through the winter.
It unsettled some of them in the summer, and that’s clearly the strategy already with these constant press stories about clubs being interested … but not wanting to pay our asking prices. This is designed not only to unsettle, but to make players think we’re pricing them out of moves.
Most of the “bids being prepared” will never materialise, as is quite obvious from other windows involving our players and some of those across the city which the press has been trying to help them flog. This stuff will not test our resolve one bit, even if it does cause the odd flicker of unrest in the dressing room.
To truly find out how serious we are about resisting clubs are going to have to make us offers they think we can’t refuse.
Hey, anyone who wants to try knows how to find us.
We’re online, we’re in the phonebook and Google Earth can give them directions if they fancy dropping by.
But they better come with their guns loaded or not at all.
All this talk is cheap.
Test us with action.
Put some cold hard cash on the table.
Otherwise, stop bloody wasting our time.
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