Rumours of Sunderland's Pursuit of McGeady Just Won't Go Away

[Martin]

Rumours of Sunderland's Pursuit of McGeady Just Won't Go Away...

Speculation has continued that Roy Keane's Sunderland are poised to test Celtic's resolve with a Scottish transfer record-breaking £12-13 million bid for Celtic's start midfielder Aiden McGeady. Anthony Stokes, formerly a signing target for Gordon Strachan, is also being mooted as a possible makeweight in the deal.

The young Irish international, once valued in the £35m bracket by former team mate John Hartson, has had an outstanding season with the Scottish champions scooping both the Young Player, and Player of the Year Awards as nominated by his fellow professionals.

A superb performance for the Republic of Ireland in a friendly against Brazil has further pushed McGeady in to the spotlight and attracted the attention of Sunderland manager Roy Keane who will already have known well McGeady's talents after playing alongside him at Celtic.

Despite the continued speculation no official comment has come from either club but McGeady has made clear his intentions to move on from Scotland at some point in the future. However he has indicated that his preferred destination would be Spain saying,

“I think later in my career I would like to play in Spain,” I am very happy at Celtic just now. Every player has aspirations to play in the best league.

The top four in the English Premier League are top quality but La Liga is so competitive, anybody can beat anyone else. You sometimes see the bottom teams beating the top ones, which doesn’t happen in most Leagues.

“You have the top teams such as Barcelona, Real Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia and Villarreal but outside of that there are plenty of good teams as well.”.


Notably there seems to be little concern among the Celtic support that their favoured son could be about to leave for the lower reaches of the Premiership despite the huge figures being quoted. Many believe that McGeady, who is advised by members of his immediate family, will look at other Celtic youngsters who have made the move to the Premiership and struggled to make an impact.

In particular, in recent years, Liam Miller and Shaun Maloney, tempted by Manchester United and Aston Villa respectively. Informed opinion suggests that McGeady, with a clutch of medals and personal accolades so early in his career, will not fancy playing in a relegation dogfight and indeed will continue his development at Celtic until he has a choice of clubs, in England or Europe, who can match his ambitions.

Should a bid in the £12m bracket come in it will be very interesting to see if Celtic, working within the financial restrictions of the SPL, can afford to turn down such a windfall.

[celtboy]

good post martin, might have to let him go if an offer that big comes in, hope not.

[Dempsey]

Martin, big bolded headline within the post is needed, have a gawk at the home page!

Otherwise, well written piece

[ellboy]

12 million maybe tempting but it would have to be cold hard cash. Stokes as part of the deal, no thanks.

Can’t see Aiden wanting to play for a relegation team in Sunderland his ambitions are clearly much higher than that.

I really hope 12 million would not be accepted by Celtic as players like Aiden don’t come along to often. However I would not be surprised if someone came in with a silly bid, to prize him away.


BTW Martin top class.