WE have been played. From Peter Lawwell, through to the Celtic fans media, the supporters on social media and the guys talking about football in the workplace and the in pubs, we’ve all been had. And it has to be said we all played our parts beautifully.
Some supporters called Rodgers a snake or a rat for the way he sneaked off to Leicester City in the night late in February, taking most of the backroom staff with him, to leave Celtic in the lurch. This time last year he was talking about morals and the right for Celtic players to leave to go earn fortunes in England.
The lure of the money that is to be earned in the English Premier League seems to do this to people. We should however settle on Rodgers merely being a rat, and leave the snake tag to the agent of players like Stuart Armstrong, Ryan Christie and of course David Turnbull.
Last night Motherwell got their much needed money for a teenager that has played just over half a season and finished the campaign in the bottom six, so playing against the likes of Hamilton, St Mirren and Dundee.
There is no chance that with that short record mostly against modest opposition, Turnbull could have expected to win a move to the Premier League. Look at Stuart Armstrong, who was a stand-out at Dundee Utd before getting a move to Celtic and after a change in managers he found some form and thereafter did all he could – aided by the snake – to get his move to the Premier League.
£16k a week became £50k for a player who had played in an Invincible Celtic side, won two Trebles and had played in the Champions League and for Scotland. He spent most of his first season warming the bench as Southampton struggled against relegation.
Turnbull is going to Norwich City and has a much steeper challenge ahead of him than the one faced by Armstrong.
After having a bid accepted by Motherwell, Celtic had permission to speak to the player and his agent last week. By Friday dark arts were at play with misleading information being put into the public domain regarding completed medicals and then leak that the negotiations had faltered as Celtic were not prepared to meet the player’s demands.
Celtic took the unusual step of updating the support directly through the club’s Twitter handle describing the offer that had been made to Turnbull as ‘magnificent’ and stating that club would move on if matters weren’t agreed soon.
Over the weekend it appeared that Turnbull blinked. The Barnsley bid was unacceptable to Motherwell, nowhere near as high as Celtic’s and they wanted to pay in three instalments, Sheffield Wednesday were mentioned but that looked no more than a rumour, even a strategically placed one, and it looked like the best offer was going to be Celtic’s. And in the absence of a better offer he was always going to take Celtic’s.
Turnbull deleted Motherwell from his social media. He spoke to one or two friends, there’s even a regular on one of the Rangers forums who heard from Turnbull in the gym over the weekend that he’d be signing for Celtic. And people who know what they are talking about at our club informed us that the deal was back on.
Let’s be clear about this, Celtic believed at the start of this week that was going to sign for Celtic. They had reason to believe this too.
Scott Brown was put in-front of the media to re-assure the teenager that he’d be given a very warm welcome from every singe player in the dressing room and that he’d be coming to a club were he stood a great chance of winning medals.
Celtic, rightly has an excellent reputation in the game so if the Scottish Champions were so keen to sign Turnbull then there must be something worth looking at. Norwich, just promoted to the Premier League, will have the huge television money coming their way, had already taken Paddy Roberts on loan from Manchester City for next season.
They also have the former Celtic striker Teemu Pukki who scored the goals that won the Championship for them to win them their place in the Premier League. And they did very well signing Kenny McLean from Aberdeen – after an outstanding first season he’s just signed a contract extension at Carrow Road.
So yesterday the Norwich manager Daniel Farke decided to take a punt and that of course meant that things were about to change again in the negotiations between Celtic and Turnbull.
The snake had obviously been touting the player around the bottom half of the Premier League and how do you think he pitched that one? The word CELTIC would have been pretty prominent in his sales patter.
The player had been on £600 a week at Fir Park. Celtic’s offer had increased to £12,000 a week and would go no higher. Celtic have players who have played in plenty of games, winning three trebles who are paid around that sum and there was no way forward after it became clear that the Celtic offer was not going to be accepted given the late interest from elsewhere.
Celtic immediately withdrew from the negotiations, ending their interest in signing the player. Tom English, the BBC Chief Sports Writer took to Twitter to make a remark about Motherwell’s dismay at missing out on the money from Celtic. But that dismay was short lived as – surprise, surprise – the Norwich City bid duly arrived and was immediately accepted.
It was for £3.25million, thus matching the offer from Celtic – £2.75m plus add ons relating to match appearances.
The strange thing about all of this is that midfield is actually the one area of the team that Celtic probably didn’t need to strengthen. At present we are well short in full back, central defence and perhaps the striker departments, yet the attention has all been about a 19 year old who this time last year was playing in the Motherwell reserves.
The Celtic Star’s poll has been rolling on throughout this. We asked the support if you still wanted Celtic to sign the player given the initial rejection of Celtic’s magnificent offer. We can call a halt to that now with the final votes being as follows:
Total votes cast – 8,201 (supporters can only vote once on our Polls).
NO – 5,702 votes (70%)
YES – 2,499 votes (30%)
Initially the NO vote was as high as 81% but with such a sizeable percentage of the Celtic support taking part in the Poll, the result is very clear.
Turnbull wasn’t wanted by the Celtic support. We’ve probably dodged a bullet.
And a quick word in the ear of Ryan Christie, there are other agents out there, it’s going to be a long time before that snake is going to be entertained at Celtic Park again.
