Celtic Sites Shouldn’t Be Inventing Fantasy Football League Numbers Over Juranovic.

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.