Hot on the heels, yesterday, of the continued rumours about Kieran Tierney being linked with a move to Spain, it’s the turn today of Jeremie Frimpong to be touted for the massive transfer deal.
He is being linked to Barcelona, after being linked with Bayern Munich just a few weeks ago.
This all continues to add up to good news for our club.
As with Tierney, it’s inconceivable that Celtic does not have some sort of sell-on clause for the player. This will net us a tidy sum on top of the profits we’ve already made from the initial sale. This is good news in and of itself.
But as I said the other day, the really good news is what this continues to do to our global football reputation. We are trusted as a club which brings players on and makes them better.
Our long history of helping shape footballers who go on to bigger and bigger things is evident in this interest.
Even those folks who don’t credit us with doing that much in the development stakes – and we are due credit for that, of course – know the only other thing that matters.
Celtic can spot a player. We are doing something right.
Frimpong hadn’t even blipped on the radar of other clubs when we snapped him up as a Manchester City youth player. They must be furious right now with how that has turned out.
The likes of Virgil Van Dijk had not made an impact before Celtic came along.
Now every club which turned down a move for him wonders what might have been.
Already we have people talking about our eye for players in Asia; that’s down to the boss, of course, but there’s definitely more to it than that. A certain amount of analysis must have gone into the process for the club and the manager to have sanctioned the deals.
You can see what happens when the process gets flawed, as it was for a brief time in the Rodgers and Lennon tenures.
Frimpong came out of that period, but so did Bolingoli, Barkas and Ajeti.
The thing is, we aren’t going to get every decision right but the fee we brought in for Frimpong was the equal of what we paid out for the latter two players and that proves that when you do hit the jackpot it can cover a multitude of less than smart business.
That’s the thing with this gig; when you’ve had as many notable successes as we have, people will overlook the signings you made that didn’t work out. If Frimpong and Tierney both roll up in Spain for big money they carry the reputation of Celtic with them.
David hay was our champion player scout