Celtic’s disastrous public relations department should be applauded for making bad news out of what would otherwise have been a positive story for some of us; Filip Benkovic is heading for Belgium.
I am pleased. I don’t think a guy who’s played 11 games in 18 months is the sort of player we should be looking at.
The trouble is, we confirmed that he was.
So this is a snub. There’s no other way to put it.
The club has presumably reached out, or we would never have told the press otherwise.
Indeed, Sky confirmed that we were in talks days ago and a board friendly website teed the move up for the fans.
People at Celtic expected this deal to be done.
That’s why John Kennedy had so many positive things to say about him the other day, and why he confirmed that Benkovic is on the shortlist. Why did he add fuel to the story? What the Hell was he playing at?
This is typical of our lop-sided way of doing things right now.
All Kennedy had to say is that we’re aware of speculation but that we don’t comment on it. Simple. We wouldn’t have been able to shut the story down, but he didn’t have to turbocharge it.
Is there not one single media-savvy individual at Celtic, or was this another example of arrogance triumphing over common sense?
It might not be the last time in this window that we look ridiculous because of a transfer story; we postured in the summer over Alfie Doughty and advertised our view that he would sign for us on a free … the Ibrox club made its move for him a few days ago, and anyone who thinks that’s not a tough decision for him is mad.
Doughty might well snub us in favour of Ibrox; he would be the first player with the two options who chose that option in years.
Whilst I don’t think it would be a particularly grievous loss it would be a massive PR coup for them, and one that would leave Lawwell looking more like an idiot than he has in quite some time, which is really saying something.
Let’s face it, if Benkovic moves to Belgium Lawwell’s not looking too good anyway.
It Sky has it right, and we really had opened talks, Benkovic would have been our first pick.
You dread to think of who else might be next on the list, and what new Hell we might be in for.
What a shocker of a season this has been, folks.