The South Korean club Suwan has all but confirmed that Celtic made a bid for their outstanding young talent Oh Hyeon gyu, who I wrote about a couple of days ago.
He’s definitely one of those players who ticks all the boxes for this club.
Oh Hyeon gyu is a dazzling footballer whose just 21.
He can play anywhere across the front. He looks like the sort of guy who could easily fit into Ange’s style of play, and reports in Korea said that we had made a good offer to his team.
That’s been echoed in the statement his club has posted on their website. They have the guy on a four-year deal, they say, and he’s an integral part of their team. But they know, as we know if we get good offers for top players from top sides, that this is not really a debate about whether he will go but about when he will go.
They know that the guy is going to leave, but they are drawing a line in the sand about the prospect of him leaving any time soon. They have, in short, said that a January deal is almost out of the question.
And Celtic won’t panic over that.
Giakoumakis is not rocking the boat at Celtic Park. He might have turned down a new deal but it’s not clear that he’s annoyed enough that there are doubts over whether or not he will stay at the club.
If we plan to sell him in January it will only be after his replacement is not only sourced but signed; the same plan we’re following with Juranovic.
So if Oh Hyeon gyu’s club want to wait until their domestic season ends before they talk business, we can respect that … so long as we negotiate a first option on the player, at a set transfer fee.
The problem is that our interest will spark interest elsewhere, which is what happens when your club has the reputation ours does now for talent spotting.
So this adds a little wrinkle to our pursuit of the player.
It changes things somewhat. But hopefully not in a way that causes us problems … we are still in charge here and as long as we have Giakoumakis on a long term deal we will handle whatever is thrown at us.
Oh Hyeon gyu will be sold. His club knows it. They have him under a long-term deal and we have our big Greek striker under the same. That’s the critical thing to understand. We also have other targets in mind, and will move swiftly onto them if we have to.
His club is smart for wanting to wait until the summer.
All we have to do is agree to pick this up then, and tell our big Greek in the meantime that, like Oh Hyeon gyu himself, he’s stuck where he is at the moment. That’ll put things neatly into place for us all.