I look across Celtic cyberspace this morning and I can barely believe some of what I see.
We have some fans who, as angry as they are, believe we’ve done well to get big money from Frimpong and are pleased to see the back of Olivier Ntcham.
There are some who also don’t rate Ben Davies and think it’s no big deal that he slipped through our fingers.
I’ve got to admit; I don’t know much about the boy myself only that he’s ended up at Anfield.
I do know that I rate the opinions of Jurgen Klopp and the professionals who have turned that club into the biggest on in England.
So I’ll defer to them on that and call that failure a bit of a blow.
The same applies to Frimpong, who a lot of our supporters think wasn’t as good as his early promise showed.
Yet top level scouts from the Bundesliga thought he had enough to recommend paying an eight figure transfer fee for him.
The club he’s gone to are no slouches.
I will, again, defer to people far more knowledgeable than me.
But it doesn’t take their level of expertise to recognise, anyway, that selling Frimpong so soon might be something we’ll regret.
I don’t buy this stuff about “he wants away, so we should let him go.” Hibs turned down a transfer offer for their young striker Nisbett. He requested a move. They have rejected it and told him he’s on a long term contract.
The same blinkered thinking applies to Olivier Ntcham.
Even out of the team, even off-form, he was courted by an EPL team and by Marseille.
The fee we’re getting for him is a joke. It barely represents a profit on our initial investment. Ntcham may blow hot and cold, but you cannot say that Lennon has ever truly known where or how to use him.
He has badly regressed under this manager.
He’s hardly unique in that respect.
I am disgusted that we’re letting him go so cheap.
Indeed, I’m shocked we’re letting him go at all. The next manager should have been making that call, and if Ntcham didn’t want to play for him then we would have had the option to sell in the summer.
I blame the manager 100% for the regression in Ntcham and for this departure.
Had he been able to find this guy’s best position he would have been in the team almost every week and the worst we’d have done is secure a bigger fee for him.
It’s another decision we’re going to look back on as a big mistake in years to come; he’ll be a star in France.
Two departures and a high profile miss; these guys have gone on to massive clubs in gigantic leagues much better than this one.
Those who think that Celtic loses nothing by these outcomes must know something the chief scouts of these clubs don’t.
I think we’ve really shot ourselves in the foot here.
It is short-term thinking to a fare-thee-well, but that’s all they ever do at Celtic Park these days.
