The news last night that Torino are now in the frame for Juranovic and that the club and the player are both waiting to see what England does did not come as a great surprise, let’s be honest.
We all said yesterday that Monza was a terrible club for him to go to and the transfer fee we were looking at was hideously low.
Celtic are not daft, and not even living amongst this goonish media which wishes we were can make it so. The board knows they can get more for this guy; it was just a matter of seeing who was interested and who came calling on him.
We should be aiming for eight figures. A nice £10 million would start the ball rolling nicely. If we get that then I don’t think many of us would complain, and not would the player because it would mean that some serious clubs had come to the negotiating table.
That may now happen. When you have one club interested in a player that’s a straightforward decision. If you want to get them “competing for his signature” you need two. Competing for his signature begins to look small time when you have three or more clubs because they you spark the fabled “bidding war.”
But you have to be careful.
If reports are to be believed – oh believe me, I know how daft that sounds – the two clubs from Italy want to pay later. Loan with an agreed fee type of deals.
That means, if you’ll pardon the expression, that right now neither has a pot to piss in.
So you need to watch what you’re doing dealing with clubs like that because if you push too hard they both walk away and then you’re left with a player who is antsy, with a manager who would rather move him on and bean counters freaking out.
This is chess, not checkers, and so it’s about patience and strategy and one move at a time. We have some interest from various sides. But we have only one bid. That bid should now open the way for others.
The aim of the game isn’t to encourage bids ourselves or name one outlandish fee but to let the interested parties do the auction for us.
If we can get that little process going, we’ll get what we want.
That’s more likely today than it was yesterday, and that, folks, is all to the good.
If we hadn’t played him against the FILTH at LB the offers wid be flying in! Stupid decision as he wiz unwell & we had an appropriate LB on the bench! If we got £10M ad take it in a New York Minute!!
Perhaps Monza can only afford a deferred deal because Berlusconi blew the budget on post match entertainment https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-11535327/Monza-owner-Silvio-Berlusconi-offers-players-bus-WH-S-beat-Serie-giants.html
Seriously though if a club like this is the limit of JJ’s ambitions then he’s welcome to leave because i don’t believe he has the right mentality to stay at Celtic, we want winners not players who are happy to settle for second best.