I defy Chris Sutton to say that he had a clue who Jota was before we signed him. I defy him to say that he knew that much about Aaron Mooy. I defy Sutton to say, therefore, with a straight face, that he knows we’re weaker having brought our third signing to the club today for the loss of those two. Jota played wide; we’ve signed two players who play wide. Mooy played through the middle. Which just so happens to be where Holm plays.
So how he can claim in the manner he does today that we are weaker, that we’re in some kind of race against time before the season starts, reads more like Mark Pirie type hyperbole than a sober and honest assessment of where we are right now. His demand for a marquee signing is equally absurd. We don’t need one of those … although I genuinely do believe we’ll get one. But it won’t be a signing done for the sake of it.
Celtic does not do business that way. We don’t make signings for the headline grabbing value, or because they are nice pieces of bling. We didn’t get here bringing in the Aaron Ramsey’s and their like. We got here by taking this stuff more seriously than those, like Sutton, who think that signings that “excite the fans” are necessarily good business.
How does Sutton know we’ve not already got a marquee signing? That’s not necessarily the guy who costs you the most money, after all. The two big players who generated most of the summer rumour mill stories – Kyogo at £4.5 million and Hatate at £1.5 million – cost combined what it cost us to buy Jota originally … yet most of us agree that these are two of the players the club should consider unsellable. Kyogo’s new deal was marquee for me.
Regular readers will know that I expect a marquee signing and perhaps more than one, but for Sutton to almost demand that we have one in before the season kicks off … would that be the difference maker against Ross County? I suspect we have enough about us, in the current squad, to see us through that one.
Perhaps it’s Ibrox which worries him. How foolish. For the record, I’m not in the least bit worried about that game, because we’ll be ready when we go there regardless of who is in the team. What Sutton fails to understand is that we know how the play. They have no idea how we’re going to approach that game, and that’s an advantage.
The signings will come in time. It’s not as if the club has been idle. Three are over the line, there have been three high profile contact renewals and other deals are being negotiated behind the scenes. Ibrox is shopping in the bargain bin of football; that’s much easier to do than going for top class footballers who can command huge transfer fees.
We will get there. I have no doubt that we will get there. If the club hadn’t made any moves, if the club was dragging its feet on getting deals done, I would be more concerned. My worries at the moment centre around our European squad size and the Asian Cup. I am certainly not in the least bit concerned that we have are “weaker” than we won’t bring in some interesting names. Because I am certain that we will. In time.
And that’s the thing here. Sutton needs to learn patience. He’s freaking out over nothing.