Michael Gannon wrote up his interview with Brendan Rodgers by characterising Celtic’s transfer policy as “buying in cheap.” You wonder when they are going to get their own story straight. Weren’t we the club that was accused last season of having bought success?
These people really are a disgrace, aren’t they?
What does that even mean? In the context of what clubs in the over-bloated EPL can spend then perhaps these guys are cheap, but this is the same newspaper which has been drooling over a series of free transfers at Ibrox and would be over the moon if their model looked like ours.
What bothers me most about these people is that they can’t seem to make their minds up. One day we’re overspending, and leaving the rest of the league behind, and to the detriment of the game here, and the next we’re accused of still shopping from the old biscuit tin.
What we do looks easy because we make it look easy. Ibrox has attempted to copy this strategy of ours but look at the tools there are working with for God’s sake.
They talk as if this strategy of ours wasn’t expensive to run. Our £40 million spend in the past two seasons suggests otherwise. We never get credit for it either way.
The media is amplifying the pressure on us to spend big in this window, and I think there will be a few more yet, and a couple of them for what in Scotland represents a major outlay; a couple in the £6 million mould. And yet, rumours continue to link us to Tete, and he would be a magnificent signing and a marquee player even if he were free.
Because we don’t play the free transfer market unless the player involved is special. Not just someone who has a big name, some piece of bling long since past his best.
We know that almost every free transfer footballer is a waste of money, which is why nobody has spent any on them. Look at Morelos for a sterling case in point.
But a handful are class, and Tete is one of them, and that’s why I would regard it as a massive signing whether he cost us money or not, and let the papers accuse of us penny-pinching as they will. Why, just the other day one of their own columnists – Kenny Miller – suggested that even if we do spend £10 to £15 million on a player that he’ll probably be a dug anyway.
They would love to see us do that, to rush this and spend big on some over-priced nobody who will cost the earth and be a drain on the wage-bill. But Rodgers is right to remind them that there is real quality out there available for modest fees … they call that cheap, but in terms of Scottish football a £2 million player is a cut above what other clubs can afford.
It infuriates them that we’re sitting on a squad which is largely untouched, with four signings virtually done and dusted, a top level manager in place with a seven trophies from seven record in Scotland and a chunk of change still to spend.
They had anticipated a crisis window, and despite their best efforts at painting this as one it isn’t that and we all know it. They are desperate.