The Daily Record this morning is running an article about Moussa Dembele possibly going to Aston Villa, for a £4 million fee which leaves us with “a meagre £400,000” as our sell-on fee.
That’s nearly half a million for doing nothing, by the way, a very nice chunk of change and not to be sneezed at.
So it’s not £5 million or something north of that, but that’s the kind of money that could buy Ibrox a new first team player. Still, even that only tells a fraction of the story.
Because when you add it to what we got in the transfer fee in the first place you see an exceptional piece of football business, and the sort that the Ibrox club flails desperately for.
Moussa Demeble cost us virtually nothing. We paid a cross border contract fee which I believe came to little more than £1 million. He gave us two seasons of goals, including a hat-trick against Ibrox’s pitiful NewCo.
He played his role in an Invincible campaign.
When Dembele left, he netted us an astronomical £19.8million.
That’s twenty times what we paid for him, so The Record can write all the snide articles that it wants about we’re banking a pittance here at the end, but our deal for him remains one of the best transfer turnarounds in the history of Scottish football and nobody at Parkhead is crying the blues.
Dembele should have done better in Lyon.
A lot of us thought it was the wrong move at the time, he was built for EPL football and could have gone there and been a hit.
It’s been evident for a while that we were going to get close to nothing for the big guy when he finally left France, as his contract is running down and he might even go for free.
But Celtic has had its money’s worth out of that deal, and a long time ago.
We got our big pay day and anything else would have been a bonus.
Over the years we’ve also made plenty from sell on clauses, including the whopper we got when Van Dijk went to Liverpool … so as much as The Record might want to paint this as a bad news day, it isn’t.
Dembele was playing second fiddle to Memphis Depay at Lyon for a bit.
His loan move to Atletico which had an agreed buyout clause should have reaped Lyon €33m failed to come to fruition due to lack of game time and as a result form.
If Celtic reap a further £400k this will still usurp the fee they got for promising young striker Charlie McCann.
One player to keep an eye on would be Kieran Tierney who has slipped down the pecking order at Arsenal behind Zinchenko.
I think there could be movement this Summer if that doesn’t change.
Over on one of the funnier Rangers blog sites they were heralding a good 6 figure sum for a boy who came thu the ir youth system and not everyone makes it, yada yada. Charlie McCann.
A quick bit of research shows McCann came to rangers in 2021 for around £750k from man U reserves. So they got half back on what they outlayed.
The Dembele windfall blow story is a wee comfort blanket they like to snuggle into now and then , for example , after they’ve had to report through gritted teeth that Celtic have signed another player
Who cares what that blue rag writes it’s all bullshit”anyway .
The huge profit Celtic FC received for Dembele was banked many moons ago ,just like the enormous profit the JJ sale brought in this week amongst other huge gains financially from many previous player sales ! If I did not know better ,I’d be inclined to say that the daily Record rag of a tabloid goes out of its way to find a snide story to counterbalance any good stories …. Professional jealousy comes to mind !
It’s probably £400k more than sevco will get for morelos and kent. No wait …what am I saying? It’s £20.2 million more. Remember when sevco said they were worth £40-50 million each yet now it looks likely that they will run down their contracts and leave for nothing/nada/zero. Shrewd business sevco. Well done!