Yesterday, I wrote about the latest nonsense about Juranovic.
Two things have happened since then.
The first is that a story with origins in clickbait has gone viral, for reasons that I will never be able to fully understand, and the second is that one of the foundation stones on which it was built has already crumbled to dust with a genuine “in the know” figure from Juranovic’s homeland already demolishing the Manchester Utd link.
The only part of it now left to demolish is the link with Chelsea.
They are also busy doing that for us.
They aren’t going to buy Juranovic.
Let’s be honest about this right now. Let’s put the cards down on the table for once, all of them, showing what we’re holding face up and tell it true without any embellishment whatsoever.
You ready? Here goes. (And the thing, most people know this.)
Juranovic isn’t good enough to play for Manchester United or Chelsea or Atletico Madrid.
There it is in black and white.
He hasn’t done anything so far which remotely justifies teams which weren’t in the least bit interested in him 12 months ago taking a punt on him now for the kind of big money that it would take to even move Celtic an inch.
That kind of offer isn’t going to come in.
Not from clubs like these.
And since clubs like them are the only people who are able to spend that kind of cash on a punt Juranovic won’t be leaving Celtic in this campaign. Not just in this window, but this campaign.
Today a lot of Celtic sites are speculating on what the magic number would be.
Why bother? Whose interests does it serve?
It keeps going a story that otherwise would be going nowhere.
It lends the original story credibility it simply doesn’t deserve.
Celtic has not “named a price” for the player.
Because no-one has actually asked us what he would cost.
Clubs might think they have a fair idea.
The only question they have to ask themselves is “is he worth bidding for?” And the answer to that, at the moment, for clubs like these is no. He wouldn’t significantly make their teams better than they are.
Don’t even get me started on the Calvin Bassey transfer fee; it’s ridiculous, and no top club from a top league would have paid it.
Ajax are betting on the judgement of Van Bronckhorst, which is a really stupid thing to have done and they don’t represent a side from a top five league. The teams at the higher end of those divisions can sign better than Bassey and better than Juranovic as well.
None of those super-clubs is sniffing around Scotland.
For all the players this league has produced and had on its doorstep lately only one – Kieran Tierney, an outstanding athlete and model professional with a ton of experience at a young age – went straight from here to a mega-club.
He’s the exception, and he’s the exception because he was, to state the obvious, exceptional.
Be honest and ask yourself; when you watch Juranovic are you looking at a Chelsea or Manchester United calibre player? No, and we know we’re not and we’re not even professional scouts or analysts.
You don’t have to be that to know this.
So it’s a fantasy.
Making up numbers that Celtic might accept in the improbable event that a bid from one of these sides comes in isn’t just futile and daft, it props up the rumour mill and the rumour mill is used at times to unsettle our players and that’s all that’s happening here.
The mainstream media knows that Juranovic isn’t being considered for a move to a top six EPL side, so what else are they doing here but stirring the soup?
And Celtic fans shouldn’t be helping them do it.
James, I think you’re selling him short. What’s undoubtedly true is that top teams across Europe are undoubtedly scouting him (and most of the rest of Celtic’s squad!) because that’s what scouts do. He’s not going anywhere in this window because (1) Celtic won’t sell for anything short of a king’s ransom, and (2) Juranovic will want to play every week as well as in the Champions League to cement his place in Croatia’s starting lineup for the World Cup.
It wouldn’t be a huge shock if bids came in for several of our players in January depending on how they do in the Champions League and the World Cup. Juranovic, O’Reilly, Jota, and Abada would all be attractive assets for a number of big clubs across Europe, and their valuations are only going to increase between now and January.
They STUPIDLY did this sh§te with moreorless and that BACKFIRED spectacularly, as they couldn’t move that fat bastard with any less than than 100 weight of industrial explosives
Let them print sh§te, it’s what they do, in fact; it’s ALL THEY DO. FQ EM.
Juranovic is an exceptionally good player who I would want to retain.
He will go nowhere to sit on a bench with the impending WC in Qatar. Thus he will be with us until after the WC so, if anything, January will be the earliest he leaves.
To say he wouldn’t get on that Man Utd team however is an absolute nonsense.
I would rather we keep our best players though…unless they eat to leave.
When are some of our supporters going to get a grip on realism. None of our players at this moment in time are World Class. One or two could go on to be World class, I’m thinking of Jota and maybe O’Riley.
The talk around Juranovic is either the media trying to unsettle the player or his representatives trying to talk their player up.
Ange is building a capable team which will hopefully raise our profile in Europe. What we don’t need is some of our sillier supporters speculating about the fee we can get for one of our players. All I’m interested in is how successful Celtic are going to be not how much money we’ll get for any of our players.