Football Scotland’s Idah Story Contains Not One Verifiable Fact For Celtic Fans To Read.

Yesterday, The Daily Record off-shoot Football Scotland published an article that said Norwich City were going to “play hardball” with Celtic over Adam Idah. It’s a story that was guaranteed to get hits, and really that’s all Mark Pirie cared about when he filed it.

That story contained just one thing; a big fat hole in the middle, a big circle of nothing. There were no quotes from Norwich. No “we spoke to a source.” Just “Football Scotland understands …” without giving us a single thing to support it.

“Understands” how? How was this “understanding” reached?

For all we know, it was based on something that appeared on a Norwich fan blog. It could be their local Keith Jackson taking a punt based on nothing more than the application of common sense to the situation; Norwich are about to appoint a new boss, and he is going to want to have a look at every player before he makes decisions on them.

Nowhere in that article is the slightest justification for the claim that they are “playing hardball.” At worst, they are taking their time and having a look at him and they are absolutely entitled to do that. It’s not “hardball” to want to consider whether or not he has a future at Carrow Road. We will bring back Mikey Johnston and do the same.

Adam Idah is their player until he isn’t. Everyone at Celtic is well aware of that which is why we’ve not gone overboard with the praise or made ridiculous promises we might not be able to keep or tried to unsettle him via the media.

This is a waiting game, and that’s unfortunate but it also happens to be the proper way that this stuff is done, and so I am not going to lose sleep over a ridiculous article like this which contains not one verifiable fact. It is typical of the underhanded way that our media operates that someone like Pirie can manufacture a story out of absolutely nothing.

Adam Idah is clearly on the list of players we’d like to bring in. The only difference between Idah, and perhaps Bernardo, and the rest is that because we had these guys on loan it stands to reason that we might have them on the target list … the problem Pirie and others have is that they don’t have the first clue who else is on that list, which is why we’ve been linked with half the goalkeepers in Europe this week and not one of those stories has panned out.

Who knows whether we’ll get Idah or not? Even if Norwich do play “hardball” it will more likely than not be over the fee than anything else … and that will be, at least in part, our own fault for not securing a right to buy option in the loan deal.

But I remain confident that deals can be done which will satisfy us all. Even if we lose out on Idah that will not be the earth-stopping disaster the media will certainly attempt to paint it. We are a ways from a final answer either way, and this isn’t even white noise … this is something that sounds a whole lot to me like nothing at all.