He’s the Hamish Iniesta.
Kieran Tierney signed a new 4-year contract the other day.
Linked with a young Croat defender who plays for Dinamo Zagreb today, valued at £4m which I doubt we’d pay.
Hooper also linked with a return on loan - no thanks.
Sutton had a good article in the Record today saying it would be very bad for Celtic to sell Van Dijk if we make the group stages and disgraceful if we entertain any offers under £15m for him.
Southampton are supposed to be signing Koulibaly off Napoli which would lessen their need for a centre half.
I think we should offer Virgil a 1 year extension at about 40k a week and a clause allowing him to leave if we get £15m for him.
I think we’ll be in big trouble in whatever European competition we’re in if we sell Van Dijk. Boyata has made a few errors but I think he’s decent enough. But Mulgrew has too many limitations as a centre back and Ambrose is palpably not good enough. Hoping we can patch together an acceptable defence with a £2-3m last day of the window acquisition is unrealistic.
Little known fact WW2 was actually fought for footballers rights to play for whoever they wanted.
Denayer strongly linked with a return.
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Unrale if he returned and we kept Virgil.
Denayer now looks like he’s heading to Marseille.
McGeouch has joined Hibs.
Some paper stories today suggesting Norwich have asked for Griffiths in a swap with Hooper. Deila didn’t really want to comment much on it but certainly seemed to rule out Griffiths leaving.
Celtic and Villa have apparently agreed a fee for Kozak. The man has a great knack of being in the right place at the right time, decent scoring record. Did well most days I have seen him play. His main downfall is that he has no pace whatsoever.
Looks like Scepovic will be off. Kozak is decent but not the type of striker I feel we need.
I thought Ciftci filled the role of target man that Kozak would be addressing. I think Griffiths has matured into an excellent striker though and if he continues in this form we don’t need an alternative predator or pacy type.
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Tyler Blackett strongly linked on a season long loan. Can’t see the point in that at all. Before the Malmo or Qarabag games it would have made sense. Now it’s fairly pointless.
Also linked with Christie of ICT. 500k and then loan back for the season. He looks like a decent player.
Not exactly inspirational ambitious stuff.
Van Dijk was at the airport this morning
CQN (and some media outlets) have us linked with Fabrice N’Sakala of Anderlecht. He’s a left back.
Celtic Underground mentioning Jozo Simunovic again.
My own reading of the situation is that Blackett will cover us at centre back and left back and we’ll sign another centre back. I wonder how much Lawwell’s bonus will be this year to go along with the further downsizing in operation.
We look shocking at the back, I wasn’t a great fan of Matthews but all in all he was pretty reliable and you needed that with Lustig so injury prone, Janko is a huge downgrade of him. I’ll not write off Boyata completely yet but he’s looked really bad, his decision making and positioning don’t look anywhere near the level we should be aiming for. Blackett looked very bad when I saw him at United last season and I don’t like the idea of us developing players for other teams like happened with Denayer last year.
For me, we need a new back four and a striker before the transfer window shuts. I’d say we’ll be lucky to get one of those while we have a big pool of cash slowly being siphoned away by those in the boardroom.
[quote=“Nembo_Kid, post:155, topic:20391, full:true”].
My own reading of the situation is that Blackett will cover us at centre back and left back and we’ll sign another centre back. I wonder how much Lawwell’s bonus will be this year to go along with the further downsizing in operation.
We look shocking at the back, I wasn’t a great fan of Matthews but all in all he was pretty reliable and you needed that with Lustig so injury prone, Janko is a huge downgrade of him. I’ll not write off Boyata completely yet but he’s looked really bad, his decision making and positioning don’t look anywhere near the level we should be aiming for. Blackett looked very bad when I saw him at United last season and I don’t like the idea of us developing players for other teams like happened with Denayer last year.
For me, we need a new back four and a striker before the transfer window shuts. I’d say we’ll be lucky to get one of those while we have a big pool of cash slowly being siphoned away by those in the boardroom.
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Yep, I agree with that.
I wouldn’t write Janko off completely but he has plenty of improving to do and he’s clearly not as capable now as Matthews was when he left. We knew Lustig couldn’t play regularly and thought an unproven kid and Ambrose was adequate cover.
Left back is a nightmare. Izaguirre is completely out of form, Matthews was our best cover and is gone and Mulgrew is incompetent. Blackett helps that a bit but why are we taking him on loan? There was some talk yesterday that there might be a buy option but I don’t believe it. We just don’t do that with our loan signings - the same talk was there around Keane and Bellamy and Guidetti and we never convert because the option is too high and is conditional on the player too. Samaras is the only loanee we converted to a permanent signing that I can recall.
We shouldn’t be loaning from the EPL anyway. We wasted plenty of wages on the likes of Tonev last year. We wasted as much on Wakaso etc so it’s not an anti-EPL thing but players from the EPL are out of our price range and we should stop coveting them.
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Simunovic links really heating up now. Croatian media are reporting a fee of €8m. It won’t be that much but might well be €5-6m apparently which is a big investment, possibly our biggest since Brown.
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What position does he play? Is he any good?
What are we getting for Virgil?
He is a centre back. He’s 21. Reports are mixed at best. But who the fuck has really seen him play? He has played all sorts of underage levels for Croatia and has 50+ senior appearances for his club. Seems like a big lad.
He gets an og here:
Fee agreed with Zagreb for Simunovic.
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