Yesterday, an Ibrox fan site inspired scorn by claiming that their club could record nine figure transfer income this summer. It turned out that its thick writing staff had assumed that putting using a decimal point in the right place could add up to over £100 million in fees. What they meant, of course, was not a nine figure total but an eight figure one.
I thought, and still think, that was equally ambitious. I also think as mad as it is, it’s not quite as mad as what some of the media have suggested in the course of this summer.
Foremost in my thinking is the lunatic suggestion that they might have gotten £4 million from Saudi Arabia for the ex-Aberdeen reserve player Scott Wright.
Today he’s leaving the club for more than I expected him to, but far, far less than what some of the gibbering nutters in our media, and on the Ibrox fan sites, predicted; he’s going to Turkey for a mere £500,000. I think he’s worth maybe half that.
Still, this is the shattering of another delusion and I don’t expect it to be the last one. Ibrox’s dreck is not going to fetch mega-bucks. Colak left recently, and not for the £2.5 million which was screamed from the headlines; the real figure was around £1.7 million.
The media has added the £800,000 in add-ons which Parma might never have to pay.
Amongst the many players they would like to get rid of are Sakala, Kamara, Barisic, Hagi and Davies. These were all considered first team players not that long ago; indeed, these guys are amongst the players Kenny Miller was assuring us just yesterday could match their Celtic counterparts if we were to analyse both squads on a man-for-man basis.
You wonder which of our players he thought Wright was a match for.
There are players in our reserve side who will go for higher fees that that, and we could earn that eight figure sum by selling any of the following; Carter Vickers, Hatate, O’Riley, Abada, Maeda, Kyogo or McGregor. I also think we’d probably get an eight figure sum for Johnston and we would be looking at a fee in the high seven figures for Starfelt, for all the criticism he gets.
A lot of delusions have come to an end with his departure on such a pitifully low sum.
Doubtless, the media will try to represent this as a masterstroke in some way but it shows them up and the spurious nonsense which they are encouraged to write about that club and its players. None of their so-called superstars would get in our starting eleven; I doubt that many of them would even be good enough to make our subs bench.
Before this summer ends, that will be fully borne out.