The other day I did a piece on Celtic’s links with Jean-Pierre Nsame; he’s the kind of player that we should be interested in.
Yesterday we were linked with the Sunderland striker Charlie Wyke, a player who’s had a stormer of a season and is therefore worth taking seriously.
Wyke’s immediate selling points are his recent goals and his contract status; he’s available on a Bosman, which means we could be tying this guy up right now, if there was a boss in the building to get the job done.
But would we necessarily want to? I mean, it’s easy to see how his stats for this campaign have put him on the radar of other clubs, but there’s a few things we ought to consider.
Back when Celtic were tracking Ivan Toney, it was clear that he was a player who it would have been worth signing if the price was right and it didn’t get too ridiculous.
He had two good seasons behind him, when his football talent had popped.
He was only 24. His scoring record in those two years and his obvious development fitted the profile of a certain striker who had played in England’s third tier and who’d done rather well for us; Gary Hooper.
Wyke is 28 and he’s bounced around the lower leagues for years.
His overall scoring record at other clubs isn’t terribly impressive, but oddly enough his records in the league have been pretty good. Except at Sunderland, where this is his third campaign.
In the first, he played 24 games in the league and scored 4 times.
In his second season there he played 27 games and scored 5 times. It’s only in this season when things have finally come good for him there; he’s 25 for 41 and in 49 games overall he’s got 30 goals.
Decent, but at 28 and no experience in the upper echelons of English football or anywhere else, you have to wonder why he hasn’t gotten a big move already. It’s hard to hold failure at Sunderland in those first two seasons against him; Sunderland has been a basket case club for a long time and failing there isn’t necessarily a deal breaker.
Where’s the interest from bigger clubs?
Again, it’s not necessarily to say that he’s a bad footballer, but he’s missed a lot of signposts along the way. If he wasn’t available on a free would he be the sort of player we’d even consider?
Of course, there’s no actual evidence that we are.
This is another story which has risen out of the rumour pool, and it may be true and it might not be … his being available on a Bosman means he’s definitely worth considering, but I wouldn’t expect miracles.
The club certainly can’t sell him to us as a replacement for Odsonne Edouard.
They’re going to need to aim a little bit higher than that.
The Blogger Guy is a Celtic fan and blogger from Glasgow.