Michel-Ange Balikwisha

A very large proportion of all transfer business across the world is all done at the very end of the window , for very obvious reasons that have been outlined on here numerous times. Nobody can force a player , club or agent to commit to a deal early . "it's genuinely crazy" that you don't realise how this works. Once the relevant parties know what the absolute best offers are , and that nothing better is coming along , they pick their move.

 

There will be some elements about getting business done in July will be difficult, some teams or players may want to wait for the best offers. Then again some parts are probably easier as there will be some teams who want the money quickly and want players off of the payroll. Swings and roundabouts I think.

 

Absolute weirdos on here think every other teams nails their targets quickly and we're somehow uniquely incompetent at signing players, the way they talk we've never signed a good player in our puff and come out of every window weaker than the last, they don't live in the real world.

 

We could do a plethora of business if we wanted to. The struggle is trying to do the right business. It's incredibly difficult for a club like ours to navigate the right balance between bringing in the correct level of quality and the time we give to complete a deal.

Whether you want to believe it or not, the pros of playing for Celtic aren't enough for certain players who would rather come up against the very best players in the world in one of the big leagues. £40k a week at Celtic, playing 8 games in the Champions League and 4 derby games isn't enough when that player could move to Bournemouth for the same salary, in the most watched league in the world and know that a performance there is leading to a huge move. He could get 9/10 ratings in every Celtic vs Rangers game and the Champions League games and he's still not getting a move to a top team directly from us.

Players want to weigh up their options. That's perfectly reasonable. This "well if they need to be convinced to come to Celtic then * them" just isn't living in the real world because that's where you do end up with cheap punts, probably 3rd or 4th on the list and we all sit here and say the club didn't wait long enough, as your number one choice moves to a team we can compete with and starts producing phenomenal displays, putting him out of our reach after 3/4 games. Then we didn't get the manager his first pick. So, it's a difficult balancing act that most clubs in our positions find themselves in. It's certainly not unique Celtic and never will be.

 

It depends. By “business” do you mean young project or punt types who see Celtic as an incredible opportunity? Or do you mean quality ready made players who have ambition to play in the top leagues?

If it’s the latter then I hate to break it to you, but yes - July is a difficult month to do business. The vast majority of those type of quality players have a chance (whether that’s a definitive chance or just their agent filling their head with hope) at a “better” move to a bigger league with better money and a better stage to showcase their ability to maximise future moves.

I have no idea what you do for a living, but if you were required to find a new job by the end of August and you had a decent offer on the table right now, but were led to believe a better offer was soon to arrive, you likely wouldn’t jump at the first offer, would you?

The reality is we’re a big club in a puddle, not even a small pond. We’re way down the food chain for quality players, whether we like it or not. We’ll get players in, but the reality is they may well be third or fourth choice targets. I’d always want to keep trying for the best quality we possibly can though; even if it’s frustrating as * at times.

 

We signed both Bernardo and Idah in August last year.

Both players had been here the year before, were keen to come back, their clubs were willing to do business amd we wanted both yet we took a * age to get both in.

You can defend the club as much as you like and give excuses but we are far too slow to get business down.

We have failed at our last 4 attempts to qualify for champions league through the play off route, and vast majority of supporters at the time criticized the club for going into such big games under prepared or under strengthed while sitting with millions sitting in the bank.

Hopefully by some miracle those running the club have learned from those expensive failings but given their previous I'm not overly confident they will have.

And to get this thread back on topic. We have been chasing this guy for a year. We either want him or we don't.
If we want him what's another month gonna tell us that we've not learned in the last 12?

Go and * get him and let him do pre season

 

You know there was sticking points with both those deals. We clearly didn’t want to pay the agreed fee for Bernardo and rightfully so. He’s just a total nothing player but we wanted to pay a fee that merited where we believed his status was, which is why we got it down from £6m to £3.5m. That was a good decision by the club but the bigger question is did we overpay at £3.5m? I think we probably did.

The Idah transfer was clearly difficult, especially given there wasn’t an agreed fee and Norwich wanted an obscene amount of money. We waited, we decided to call their bluff and in the end, we blinked first. We should never have agreed a loan deal without a buy option and it came back to bite us on the *. Even still, we clearly got the first pick for the manager. Eventually, after a fright with a potential Kyogo injury, we decided to pay the money to get him in. Rightly or wrongly, we decided to wait. It worked on one and it didn’t work on the other.

Go back a year before that though. You, know, when we had agreed buy options for both CCV and Jota. What happened there again? Yeah, we bought both in early June. For a combined £14m. So, the club will pay an agreed fee when they believe it’s warranted. We can all agree that the Bernardo deal was worth bringing down.

You seem to think I’m defending the board. I’m really not. I think they’ve a history of negligence, certainly before Ange. However, I like to give them the benefit of the doubt in assuming that’s changed and that lessons have been learned, given Ange got what he wanted and spent a fortune and Rodgers got the same, certainly from last summer. Whilst I think his relationship with the Ultras is * and he’s a lot to do with it, Nicholson certainly seems to stay out of the players we target, allowing the scouting team to work with the manager and the HoR. Obviously, when the money decisions come in, he’s part of negotiations but you can’t really say he’s not done a relatively good job, certainly since Ange came in. We’ve spent nearly £30m every season since Ange.

The club will be working on countless deals. I’m not entirely sure he’s first choice and I think the club will be trying to work out a deal with other players. We will be talking to loads of players, loads of agents and our name has been in and around this guy for the last year or so. Even still, we may have someone we prefer and are waiting to see if we can get him in. If we were desperate for him in, we’d have signed him by now. Or, we may just want to see him prove his fitness in Belgium for the first few weeks of preseason before we commit to the purchase. Nobody really knows.

 

The more videos i watch of this player the less impressed i become.

 

Someone said he has just posted from an airport on his Instagram thats how desperate we have became...

 

Someone tell him his lace is undone.

 

I can't deal with this transfer window any longer.

 

Buckle in mate, we’re already near the tracking flights stage

 

None of that changes the fact that agents and players really have an advantage over clubs especially half way through the window. We have to play a shrewd game else we end up with expensive failures.

 

Brutal

 

At this moment, in all honesty, you’d say Trusty, Idah and especially Engles have all been less than what is expected for the outlay. Are the board looking at this and thinking why spend big when we can get the same output from someone a quarter of the price? If it was my business I might be thinking along those lines. Anyway, what the F is Tidsdale up to, identifying projects?
Yes I am very concerned with the business so far, CL qualifier on the horizon.

 

This time last year we still hadn't signed anyone

 

We’ve moved on to foot pics now

 

Anyone have an update of where he was flying to?

 

Looked like he was flying back with his team