Even With A £2 Million “Celtic Premium” On The Fee, Miovski Must Be On The Summer List.

Whatever happens between now and the end of the season, there is one certainty; we are going to need to do all the work that we have colossally failed to do so far in strengthening this squad. Do I think we will? That depends what the consequences for the current failure are. There are people at Celtic Park who should be under real pressure at the moment. Not at the end of the campaign, when the outcomes are known. They should be under scrutiny right now.

Yesterday, the dropping of points was made worse by the guy I thought was the man of the match, the scorer of Aberdeen’s goal and later put the ball in the net only to see it correctly knocked off for offside. I think Miovski is a huge talent, and I wrote an article late last year (or early in January, it’s hard to keep track) saying exactly that.

At the time, some in the media speculated that he was not worth what Aberdeen were looking for; a reputed “record between Scottish clubs.” That translates to a mere £4.5 million, which is what we paid Hibs for Scott Brown. Adjusted for inflation that’s a pitifully small number, one that should be well within the reach of our club. It would have been worth it.

Even when you consider that any club in Scotland selling a player to us will add on the fabled £2 million “Celtic premium”, as Hibs wanted to do with John McGinn, you’re still talking about paying around £6 million for a 23-year-old international with huge re-sale potential who scores in big games and can play under pressure. That’s a steal.

Reports – covered by my good friend Paddy Sinat today – that Aberdeen would have been looking for £8-9 million for the guy if we were doing the bidding can be taken with a grain of salt. Because they would never get that from anywhere else and I wonder if they’d get the £5-6 million elsewhere either. They would need to be realistic about this. The only way they’d have got that kind of money was in January. In the summer, they’d have to take less.

So I reckon that £6 million would get us across the line.

Only snobs think we shouldn’t pay that kind of money for an SPFL player.

We will pay that money for an SPFL player in the future, because the stagnant stinking state of this league right now surely cannot last and at some stage the academy systems at other clubs have to start paying off. Scotland was producing world class players when guys were kicking balls around red ash pitches; why can we no longer do it with all the money being spent on developing skills and nurturing talent? At some point the ludicrous Lowland League experiment will end and this game will get real about a youth league once more.

Right now, we can only look at the clubs around us and see if they’ve discovered some gem who we have missed out on. I was never convinced by the big bruisers like Louis Moult, Joel Nouble, Van Der Veen or Lyndon Dykes, very ordinary players who excel in teams who rely on brute strength. I was never a great fan of Shankland, but I did know Leigh Griffiths was born to play for Celtic and as I told him shortly after he signed (I captured him in a Celtic Park corridor, and he looked positively un-nerved by my wild-eyed assurance) that he would score 100 goals for us.

Miovski is so obviously an excellent footballer that immense credit must go to the Aberdeen talent scouts who found him. We could do with their kind of quality in the recruitment sector right now. That they also found Duk means they’re doing something very right. Miovski has great game intelligence. He has good first touch. He moves well. He is alert and he can finish in style. He is exactly the sort of striker we should be looking for.

Frankly, if the choice comes down to the Dane striker, or someone like that, some punt who is going to cost a few quid, and a guy we know can do it here and who can be developed by the right manager into the real thing, I would go for Miovski all day and every day. He proved it again yesterday. It’s too late to get him for this campaign, but for the next one … yeah, if he’s not high up on our target list … well that’s further proof that we have the wrong people compiling it.