Celtic Finally Show Their Teeth In The Transfer Negotiations. Clubs Should Take Note.

Celtic has found itself with a predictable problem with Giakoumakis, but they have, at least, also got in their hands the perfect solution. One of the complaints some of us have had about how we’ve gone about the deals to take Juranovic and Giakoumakis out of the club boiled down to the lack of a hard strategy for dealing with interested clubs.

That has apparently changed. We’re not rolling over, not even with his replacement already signed. We have a minimum acceptable fee, way below what most of us would have thought, and we want it paid up-front.

Nobody is going to get away with pulling a stroke here just because we’ve brought another striker to the club.

The Daily Record has him and Celtic in a “transfer sweat” but really the only people sweating are those clubs who are after him and have suddenly realised that we’re not playing around here, and that when we say we want our minimum fee, paid right away, that we meant it. The player is well aware of this, and he’s even been told he might not go anywhere until the summer.

This would actually be the preferred option in some ways.

We get to have three very good strikers at the club and in the summer hope that there’s more interest out there.

And there will be, of course, and the possibility of us getting a better deal.

Our hardball stance affects the player, of course it does.

But if we hadn’t been able to buy in our new striker Giakoumakis wouldn’t have been allowed to leave anyway, so this matter has always been in Celtic’s hands, although that’s been easy for the media to ignore in their attempts to paint this as something we had no choice in.

But we have always held the cards here, even if we’ve not appeared to be playing them in a particularly good way in the course of this.

What this makes clear is that we have been in full charge of this process from the start, and should eliminate any talk of us having to deal with minimum release clauses or any of that other stuff.

It’s clear that Ange and Celtic would prefer this matter not follow us to the summer, and that has informed much of how we’ve gone about it. But in the end, we’re not mugs and we’re not desperate for a sale.

That is finally coming across, and this show of strength, even right at the end, is not only welcome but it will get us a fee we regard as acceptable.