THE other Celtic related transfer story that broke last night was that Zenit St Petersburg are SET to launch a £9million bid to sign Tom Rogic, bit the player who signed a long term contract extension only last May apparently prefers a move to England instead.
There is also some background noises about a big money bid on its way to Celtic from China for the Australian talisman and presumably it’s not one of those ones from an unnamed club invented for the benefit of newspaper headlines to try and create a market to sell the player. We’ll leave that to the other lot.
Rodgers though is likely to try to sign at least one Celtic player isn’t he? Let’s face it, he is a decent coach, in fact he’s better than that. But as a player spotter, he’s pretty poor. So the obvious place for him to shop is in the East End of Glasgow and that would probably mean he’ll chance his arm with approaches for Rogic and maybe even Callum McGregor.
The story in the Scottish Sun at the weekend linking John McGinn with a £50million move from Aston Villa to Manchester Utd may have been a lot or nonsense, achieving an indirect free kick at Celtic who we were reminded failed to sign McGinn last summer, but it does serve to remind Celtic that players like Tom Rogic are worth considerably more that the £9million mentioned in the Zenit ‘set to bid’ story.
Man Utd too were, according to a journalist, ‘set to bid’ for McGinn but not for £9million – which would have allowed Villa to treble their money in a year – but for £50million.
Meanwhile the Celtic Star, a Rolls Royce of a footballer compared to McGinn, is according to the speculation, worth £41million less!
It’s incredible really.
Celtic have cleared out their player listings on the official site, with around a dozen names dropping off. Of those only Lustig and Boyata were big contributors to the Treble Treble success.
We are being told that Kieran Tierney is going to Arsenal – and that is looking increasingly likely – and that Olivier Ntcham is heading back to France to Marseille or perhaps to be re-united with his best mate Moussa at Lyon. Tom Rogic is going to Russia, China or Leicester where he could be playing alongside Calmac (maybe they’d win the league again?) and there’s also a suggestion that Odsonne could be going there too.
All that stuff is kicking around in the press and on the internet. We’ll find out over the next month or so just how much truth there is in any of these stories. But if any of our top players are going to be sold – and remember we’d be selling proven winners – then surely we need to start holding out for decent sums?
Zenit signing Tom Rogic for £9million would be the steal of the century. The Russians, if their interest is genuine, should be told to start talking at £25million or they are wasting our time.
Expect Boli Bolingoli-Mbombo and Romaine Perraud, Arsenal wrong for KT, they’re going nowhere fast
