Giakoumakis, Juranovic And Why Celtic Fans Can Trust Mr Blonde.
The most insightful, and professional, all of the villains in Reservoir Dogs is Steve Buscemi’s Mister Pink. Whatever your thoughts might be on his non-tipping, he has a clear-eyed view from the first minute of the film to the last.
He is observant and smart and is following everything happening around him. He is the first to suss that someone is a rat. He is appalled when Mr White tells him that he’s given personal details to Mr Orange. He is as cold as they come when making decisions and getting to the crux of the matter.
He trusts, completely, one other person; the person everyone else trusts least. Mr Blonde, the stone psychopath whose murder spree is what the rest of the gang thinks set off the shoot-out with police. (Which Mr Pink has seen through for the bullshit that it is; he knows the police were already there, waiting, because he knows that it was a setup.)
His reason for trusting Mr Blonde is very simple; “he’s too homicidal to be working with the cops.” It’s a sharp observation. Mr Pink is the one member of the gang who deserves to get out of the movie with his life, and with the stones because he’s the only one who sticks to the rules and does everything a professional is supposed to do.
The way he arrives at his conclusion about Mr Blonde is exactly why I trust Peter Lawwell in this saga about Juranovic and Giakoumakis. Think it through for a second. Lawwell’s reputation is built on being tight fisted and striking a hard bargain.
Does that sound as if he’s in charge of these negotiations?
Whoever else people might be blaming for this, we should not be blaming him. Whatever is going on – and something is going on, that much is clear but I defy anyone to say they know what it is – it’s not Lawwell pushing these deals through in such a hurry because he is way too focussed on the bottom line to settle for such low offers.
Celtic fans are much more sophisticated about this stuff than we’re given credit for. If somebody explains to us the need to sell Juranovic and Giakoumakis, now, for such low-ball bids, we will most probably accept what we’re told with equanimity.
It is the uncertainty and lack of information which leads to rumours. It is that which leads to people spreading false information, such as the garbage that idiot McCoist is coming out with on the radio tonight about a release clause in the deal.
Even if Celtic agreed to such a clause, would we have put it in there at a mere £1 million more than we paid for a player who had just topped the Dutch scoring charts? This is the kind of rambling nonsense that is allowed to spread when a club allows the information void to be filled by other people. We need to do a better job with this stuff.
The only other way to combat all this nonsense is to make it irrelevant. Bring in his replacement and then people aren’t going to be picking over this with so much concern. I still think the fee is appallingly low. I still don’t believe we’ll sell him for that. But if that’s how negotiations are going the one person I know I don’t blame is Lawwell.
He’s much too money oriented to allow us to be lowballed this way. Those blaming him need to take a deep breath and think for a minute. There is no way this is his handiwork.