Frimpong continuing to impress will only improve Celtic’s chances of a lucrative sell on fee, but will the manager see any of it?…
WOW JEREMIE FRIMPONG THAT IS INCREDIBLE! 🤯🤩 pic.twitter.com/RB5hJJ8g4l
— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) February 10, 2024
Jeremie Frimpong continues to impress in Xavi Alonsos superb Bayer Leverkusen side. The German side are unbeaten in all competitions this campaign and stretched their lead to five points at the top of the Bundesliga last night by easily swatting aside Bayern Munich in a comprehensive 3-0 victory.
The former Celtic wing-back is one of the key players in Alonso’s side, and last night he showed just that by topping off a great display by scoring a wonderful goal to put the seal on a great team performance.
As we all know, Celtic had a sell on clause inserted in the full backs contract when he was sold to Leverkusen in 2021. It’s reported to be 30 percent of any profit made on the £11 million the young Dutchman was sold for, matching the 30% clause that Manchester City had inserted in their deal to sell Frimpong to Celtic. That will make for quite a cut as he apparently has a buy out clause of no less than £40 million.
A rough estimate will tell you that’s around £9 million, that’s quite a substantial sum indeed. It’s good business in anyone’s book and will only further increase the clubs coffers. But the big question is, will the Celtic manager see any of it to improve his squad in the summer and make those ‘quality’ signings he and the supporters crave so badly?
That’s if he’s still there of course, but no matter who is in charge they must receive the funds necessary to improve the squad and add the quality. The fact we are debating it already proves we need a change of direction upstairs.
Let’s assume for a moment that Brendan Rodgers is successful this season in the Scottish Premiership title race and as we know that is not guaranteed as it is neck and neck at the moment. Then we can assume that Matt O’Riley will be sold this summer bringing in at least the same sum that we got for Jota last year. Add the two together and we reach £50m, approaching sixty if you add the expected Frimpong windfall and before any other players are sold. Perhaps Liel Abada will want a move and there could be one or two others on top.
The club already has £70m in the bank and would have the guaranteed Champions League windfall to come.
The team, with substantial investment, would at that stage be nowhere near capable of competing in the Champions League. We’d be in a much worse state than this season, where we were worse than last season (despite getting more points) and even last season we weren’t good enough.
As the bank balance gets better the team gets worse. Brendan Rodgers asked for four quality signings in January window, they never arrived. If O’Riley is sold we can take that to five as an absolute minimum. This might all be academic anyway because new bookies favourites theRangers – who play their game in hand against Ross County this week – are likely to be top of the league before we play in the league again and they could be the team preparing for the Champions League come May.
Hopefully that won’t happen and Brendan can fulfil his pre-season promise to win the league. If he does he will need to be backed and before we all jump on board for next season, we should perhaps as a support find out what our CEO Michael Nicolson – who says next to nothing to the support – has to say about the club’s plans to invest in the team.
You are exaggerating the sum prospectively available to spend on acquiring new players. It’s been disclosed previously that a tax liability required to be paid to HMRC after the ‘year end’; also, there will likely be considerable outlays on the Barrowfield project, work is needed on the pitch at Celtic Park, and so on. Whilst we may hope and pray for an end to the ‘biscuit tin’ mentality, you mustn’t be misled into thinking that the club has more funds than is in fact the case.