It looks like it will be a busy week on the transfer front, with Celtic making bids for anybody you care to name, and Kevin Doyle on the brink of a move.
But not to Celtic, he is heading north though, but to Hull. According to the Daily Mirror, at any rate. So perhaps we shouldn’t get too comfortable just yet.
Forza Italia claims Celtic have had a second bid knocked back for Marco Capuano of Pescara. This time it was up £300,000 to £2m , but Pescara said ” no ” just the same.
Heerenveen have told Celtic that they will have to “throw a lot of money at us ” if Alfred Finnbogasson is to be come the new number seven.
‘He’s good for at least 20 goals a season for us and we won’t sell him for a reduced fee, ” said sporting director Gaston Sporre.
‘If we get a concrete offer for him we will negotiate, but our aim is to keep him here at Heerenveen. He hasn’t told us he is unhappy or asked for a transfer. We will wait and see.’
‘As things stand, we are losing a lot of money every week. This is a problem we cannot simply ignore.’
Get this done, Celtic. Just get it done.
With Hull already nipping in and stealing Kevin Doyle from under our noses, we can’t afford to let it happen with somebody we actually would like to see at Celtic Park.
Thats the worry. The longer it drags on, the more chance there is of another side coming in and outbidding Celtic. Although that is assuming Finnbogasson would just go where the money is. Mind you, if the Scotsman website is to be taken as read, then its obvious why Heerenveen are stalling;
” Dutch side Heerenveen want £5m for the player, while Celtic are thought to be offering £.25m ( sic ) ”
Manager Neil Lennon was pleased with the result and performance against Liverpool at the weekend, and rightly so. The fallen English giants were beaten by a team which featured nine changes from the Elfsborg ordeal, and perhaps the side isn’t as lacking in quality as first thought.
Amido Balde got his first for the club, and Lennon was happy with him;
” Amido was immense. He gave Kolo Toure and Andre Wisdom all sorts of problems. He was aggressive, strong quick and took his goal great and that gave us a real platform. ”
Balde, of course, famously told Celtic fans they would forget all about Gary Hooper when he signed, has a long way to go yet, but there are signs that he might just make it.
Steven Mouyokolo also impressed in Dublin, and none of the youngsters looked out of place. The squad , dare it be said, is fine.
Its the first team that needs a boost.
A couple of players who are going to go straight into the side, and its hard to see why its been delayed. Maybe financial, or maybe the management are having doubts…
It is not difficult to understand a certain amount of deliberation over players, and it is astonishing how a player, such as Finnbogasson has become suddenly so crucial to our season, when few of us even knew he existed just a couple of weeks ago, but from being relatively unknown in the Dutch league, the Iceman has suddenly become the new Larsson, without any of us actually ever having seen him.
Hysteria ?
Maybe, but with Lassad, Miku and Bangura all flopping at Celtic, maybe there is a good reason to take out time. After all, its not like theres much competition at this stage. Only Werder Bremen have made an offer thus far, although there will be a few more watching him this week play for his country.
Celtic have until 11pm tonight to sign anyone that they want to play in the Karagandy game, so there may be some movement. One rumour, from twitter, so it must be true, is that no-one wants to go to Khazakhstan, which is why he is stalling.
Anyway, Paddy Power have a new advert out, and it goes under the heading of Ball of Shame, and its annoying me, as I can’t quite remember the name of the ground at the beginning.
England and Scotland clash this week, and its hard to remember such a low key build up to a meeting with the auld enemy. Perhaps its the fear that someone will get injured, or maybe its just that Scotland aren’t very good. After all, the squad does contain an “unattached ” player in Andy Webster, which in itself tells a tale.
Neil Lennon hates international week;
“There is a lot of the team away on international duty, which is a concern, and then we go to Aberdeen at 12.30 on Saturday,”
“So we won’t have an idea as to who is fit until Thursday or Friday. We’ll have one eye on Kazakhstan obviously as it is imperative to our season.
“But we are hoping to fly out more or less straight after the game on Saturday and try to get out there as quickly as we can and acclimatise as best we can before Tuesday,”
Lennon isn’t happy with the timing of the international games;
“It’s awful, it’s never a good time, but the bulk of our squad are international players,” he said.
“So it is a concern but there is nothing we can do about it as we have had this problem for three or four years now.
“It’s a strange time to have a fixture and obviously the Scottish boys want to play against England.
“Sammy [Georgios Samaras] is away with Greece but I don’t think he will play.
“There are about seven or eight of them away and it is very disruptive as I don’t get them back until Thursday or Friday and we play Saturday lunWe had a lot of niggles, fatigue and illness as well, believe it or not,” added Lennon. “Joe Ledley had a problem with his appendix. We only had Lustig and Izaguirre who started the game on Wednesday in the starting side.
“It has been a very hectic schedule for us – it’s been eight games in 25 days for us. It had a bearing on the team selection. It is very, very difficult to balance it all off.”
It has been quite hectic, theres no doubt about that. Thankfully, the decision to allow players time off as last season drew to a close may well prove to have been a master stroke.
Still, I think we will all breathe a little easier when -or if-we make the group stages. We just don’t need any other distractions.
Henrik Larsson is the player who springs to mind when the words “magnificent ” and “seven ” are mentioned, but still staying with nicknmaes, who comes to mind with these images ?
Well Alan McInally was called Dumbo, I mean Rambo, but the only player I know of that was called Duke was a guy from the very early days of the club called Sandy McMahon.
John hartson (big bad john) and tommy coyne (the cobra)?
Oh hell – it’s Quiet Assasin isn’t it? Davie Hay.
That ll be the Quiet Assassin AKA Davie Hay.
Hope we get this fella, “The Iceman” he’s even got a cool nickname.
Kevin Doyle can feck off, he’s Kenny Miller without the goals
Never seen Finnbogasson play so I cannot get frustrated if we don’t get him. Signing players for 5 million isn’t in our remit as the ability to make a profit on that slim. (we’ve only sold Big Vic and Stan for more)
We should have enough already to get past the Kazakh team and compete domestically. As long as we can bed somebody in before the group games I’m happy.
Unfortunately the clubs prudent strategy means protracted negotiations with a lot of posturing. But I’m happy with the careful approach. We have enough to win the league and get to the group stage.
I’m sure they have a backup strategy like Billy Sharp or another loan striker.
chrissy bhoy you forgot aiden and we don’t have enough firepower for qualifiers
Oh I did forget Aiden
I think we have enough goals between Sammy, Commons, Stokes and set pieces to get by a Kazakh team.
This won’t be as challenging as Elfsborg.
Also, the new lad from Ajax looks like he has goals in him.
Stokes will NOT get goals in Europe. I agree he is invaluable in a domestic sense but for that step up forget it. For one recent example check out his idiocy of failing to spot a team-mate waiting alone in front of goal in the last minute of the game against Elfsborg.
I’m firmly in the ‘we need another striker NOW’ category.
Wayne Big guns?
I’d never heard of Finnbogason until last week and I imagine most other Celtic fans hadn’t heard of him either, so how come he’s suddenly become a player we must sign?
as for this belief that we have enough to get past Karagandy – how many Celtic fans had heard of them this time last week?
I hope Karagandy are as bad as we’ve been led to believe, however, they’ve just knocked out Bate, winning home and away, so they must have something to offer.