When your club is trying to buy a player – or in this case, keen to see one with a substantial weekly wage make room for future squad strengthening – Fabrizio Romano is usually a transfer expert you would trust.
However, when other clubs are showing an interest in a player you may not wish to consider may be leaving your club, you add ‘so-called’ in front of ‘expert’ and claim ‘well he doesn’t always get things right’ – such is the way of the football fan in the transfer window.
So, whilst Romano is a ‘so-called expert’ when it comes to his claims numerous clubs are interested in signing Josip Juranovic in this transfer window, he will simply be referred to as an ‘expert’ when it comes to his information regarding Christopher Jullien and his reported move to newly promoted Bundesliga side Schalke.
Romano has taken to social media to inform his followers that Jullien is in Germany, is now undergoing his medical, and that the deal with the German club is for an initial loan deal with an option to buy included.
Schalke are set to sign Christopher Jullien from Celtic. Done deal and medical ongoing right now – gonna be loan deal with buy option included. 🔵🤝 #Schalke04
Contract to be signed later today, right after medical tests.
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) June 29, 2022
“Schalke are set to sign Christopher Jullien from Celtic. Done deal and medical ongoing right now – gonna be loan deal with buy option included.
Contract to be signed later today, right after medical tests.”
The option to buy attached is a strange one, should the deal be for 12 months, given Jullien will be out of contract at the end of that period. (Celtic having presumably triggered the one year option on the Frenchman’s contract to allow the deal to proceed is probably the answer to this one). But we’ll give Romano some lee-way, in that the loan deal may well have a shorter term -say until January – for which Jullien will have a chance to prove his fitness after recovering from long-term injury – and for Schalke to assess if they wish to make the temporary switch a permanent arrangement.
And there is always the chance with Celtic contracts that an optional extra year can be added should the club have included that option as they did with James Forrest, Nir Bitton and Tom Rogic.
Whatever the case may be this will be good news for Ange Postecoglou, who it appears is keen to bring in a ball playing central defender ahead of the upcoming season, and any transfer in that area of the team was always going to be reliant on Jullien, as one of the clubs highest earners, moving on – be that on a temporary or permanent basis – and taking his hefty weekly wage with him.
You’d also imagine for Jullien this will be a welcome deal. The player will be playing in the Bundesliga and with a club of a decent pedigree, even if recent years have been strewn with on and off field strife, and our big Frenchman had already seemed to be working his ticket out of Parkhead with his ill-timed criticism regarding his lack of playing time at the end of last season.
It remains to be seen if this deal with Schalke will get over the line – after all there is a medical to navigate for Jullien – but at least we know the information coming from Fabrizio Romano is from a transfer expert – don’t we?
Niall J
🇵🇹 | Jota
Celtic will announce the signing of Jota from Benfica on a permanent deal tomorrow.
The club will pay £6.4M for the winger with Benfica retaining a 30% sell on of fee of any future sale.
[@abolapt] pic.twitter.com/TUg0SGvu2T
— Everything Celtic (@aboutceltic) June 29, 2022
