I am going to assume that today’s reports saying that a deal with Leicester for Odsonne Edouard is done to be rambling nonsense.
The fee is ludicrous. £15 million?
When you consider the PSG sell-on clause that’s attached we’re not even getting back our initial investment in him.
That’s scandalous and simply not on.
The so-called “strategists” at Celtic Park will have shown themselves, yet again, to be absolutely without a clue. I am filing this under “garbage” because I flatly refuse to believe that even our hierarchy can be this weak and stupid.
When you consider the outlay for him, and then you take the sell-on into account, our recouped fee would be in the region of £7 million or thereabouts. That’s a joke. Other clubs are interested, so it’s not as if Leicester are the only club out there who are bidding.
The press says he wants to go there; well too bad, so sad, but if theirs isn’t the best offer the club has the right – the club has the damned responsibility- to turn it down and tell him so.
And to accept such an insulting offer so that Brendan Rodgers can preen and strut around like a genius all over again? If the Celtic board plays ball with that charade they all out to be run out of town on a rail. Hey, we know Rodgers has no loyalty whatsoever to us, but this takes the piss out of us, quite blatantly, and it’s not as if our hands are tied here.
There is talk we’d be willing to do the deal at that price if there’s a whacking big sell on clause of our own in the terms; you know what? I couldn’t care less if there is.
That’s “jam tomorrow” again and in case nobody at Parkhead is aware of it, we have pressing needs in the here and now which take precedence over that.
We have a big summer in front of us.
Even for a guy in the last year of his deal, this isn’t “fair market value” and everyone knows it. This is a scalping, and the fact of is that we don’t have to accept it.
This club has to show some balls for once, and take this matter on. If Leicester offer that we have to tell them straight that it’s nowhere near enough and stick to our guns … let the other clubs come in.
If Edouard wants to agitate for the move, then so be it; tell him he only when we say so and that if he wants to make an issue of that we hold his registration for one more year. Scorch the earth if we have to here, rather than subject ourselves to this disgrace.
In that scenario, he stays for another campaign and at the end of it we get nothing.
I don’t regard that as a deal-breaker since we’re more or less getting nothing anyway at that price.
PSG done us over with their whopping sell-on clause or we were mugs for signing it; they get nothing if he goes for free as well, and that’s a little karmic justice. And Rodgers? Screw him as well, let him sign some English based player for four times the money and get half the player for it.
To accept a fee like that for our best player, and the best forward to play in this country since Henrik Larsson, is not simply an act of self-harm; I’ll consider an act of self-sabotage.
I’ll consider it arson inside the walls. Only people determined to do us harm from within could even contemplate a deal as offensive to us and counter to our needs for the summer.
If this story is true, then to put it bluntly, we’re in a lot of trouble.
Because when you look at the team which won the Invincible Treble and compare it to the current side the regression is already as plain as day. How much further down do we go before we say stop?
This, right here, is where we should draw the line.
[snack-countdown title=”Celtic’s Countdown To Champions League Disaster” date=”06/20/2021″ time=”00:00:00″ colour=”#000″ textColour=”#FFF”]