Celtic’s Reported Juranovic Fee Is Shockingly Low. That’s Just Bad Business From Us.

Are we desperate to sell players?

Because it looks like we can’t wait to get Juranovic off the wage bill. Is the master poker player, back at the table again? Because it’s been a long time since I saw us play a strong hand this badly. Juranovic for £7 million? It’s like a bad joke.

Giakoumakis too looks as if he will go for a shockingly low fee. I don’t mind us selling players, I kind of expect it, but I do mind us advertising ourselves as a cheap option for clubs who don’t want to spend big money.

I do mind us flogging the family silver for pennies.

It send out the wrong message entirely, and whilst I believe that the Korean will be a monster of an upgrade on Giakoumakis I still cannot believe that we’re apparently ready to sell him for a low fee.

There are people at Celtic who will say “aah but we’ve got a better footballer, younger, on a long-term deal and posted a profit into the bargain …” and that will be true … but that’s not what concerns me here.

That’s not where the trouble lies.

Neither Giakoumakis nor Juranovic is irreplaceable.

Giakoumakis has a happy knack of scoring goals no other player at club would score.

But he’s not the finished article the way Kyogo is, and if the Korean is a better all-round footballer and can also score goals – and the signs are good – then it’s not a bad deal for us to get shot of one to get the other.

I don’t mind us selling Juranovic either. He’s never looked like a World Cup semi-final player when he’s played domestically except maybe on a handful of occasions when teamed up with Liel Abada on the right hand side.

Rumours have dogged him for months, and perhaps it’s just that simple, with the manager no longer wanting to be dogged by rumours.

Neither would make my A List in this Celtic team, a list that has on it Carter Vickers, Maeda, Hatate, O’Riley, Jota, Abada, McGregor and Kyogo. What troubles me is that if we’re advertising our willingness to sell players for this chump change that clubs are going to believe they can come in and unsettle these guys for similarly ludicrous fees.

It’s not about anything other than self-defence.

You do not advertise yourself as an easy mark or a weak suck. This makes us look desperate, this makes us look like a team that needs to get money in the door fast, and I know we’re not that.

All transfer business – whether incoming or outgoing – is ultimately a show of force.

A test of strength. And this makes us look bad.

I get that in some ways it also makes us look ruthless; contract rebels being shipped out the door pronto before they affect the rest of the team. And yes, I think we’ve got a cracker in Johnston and if we get the Korean sensation we’re more than covered in the forward line. But this looks so much like bad business, like the thin end of what we could get if we held onto our cards a bit longer.

Now it might just be that the manager doesn’t want to do that.

Maybe he wants these guys gone quick and so we’re willing to do business at a reasonable fee so he can bring in the replacements he really wants. And I would understand that except that the more we bring in for these guys the more he gets to spend in the summer … so I thought we’d really hold out for the money these two are worth.

It’s disappointing that we seem as if we won’t.