SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

In football-apart from Celtic winning,of course-there is surely only one thing better than the huns getting beat. And that’s them losing the deciding goal in added time just after they had equalised. Hopefully it knocks the stuffing right out of them-it finally shut McCoist up at last, which is a blessing! A couple of additional injuries on the night won’t do them any favours either, but then, there are still about ten days left in the window for them to buy someone. 

You won’t see me donating to the whip-round though!

The reason I start the article talking about them is really only to allow me to discuss our own dealings (or rumours, as business has been non-existent) this month. Few of us won’t have seen Wednesday night’s match,even if it was only a highlights package. All who did will have been mightily impressed that Kyogo hit a first half hat trick. Has he got his mojo back again,we wondered. Or is it just a faint echo of better times? 

Of course,the question is academic on a number of fronts. Not least that all three were chalked off! But then came the news from the various rumour mills and “insiders” that he was over in France yesterday to put the finishing touches to a contract with Rennes. Surely one of our most puzzling transfer deals in recent years, especially given the timing. I gave my thoughts on this in Tuesday’s article, and they haven’t changed. I could accept him leaving in the summer-he clearly hasn’t taken to the role that BR requires him to play as it doesn’t play to his strengths-but to sell him now, with an important European tie in Birmingham next week plus two league matches against Dundee and Motherwell before the close of the window makes no sense. 

If the rumours are true, and it now looks a nailed-on certainty, he will go with my best wishes. I’m sure that is the case for most of us. But the timing really sucks. It leaves us with only Idah and Maeda as two recognised strikers, neither of whom features there regularly from the start. Worse of course is that Maeda is definitely suspended for the Villa game,and quite possibly the first leg of the play-off. We also have the largely untried but promising Kenny and Cummings, the latter of whom still hasn’t signed a contract extension. I can’t in all honesty recommend this move whatsoever, and for a derisory €10m it makes less sense by the minute. 

One rumour getting a fresh airing is the return of Jota, who is ironically unwanted at Rennes. That is the second club where he has failed to settle since he left us only eighteen months ago, but we all remember how outstanding he was in his two years with us. Just a pity that as a winger, he might find himself beating half the opposition then finding there’s no striker in the box for the final ball! Would I break the habits of a lifetime by welcoming back a player who had played for us previously? Well, I always want our signings to succeed, and he will be no different. But my indifference to prodigals remains. Wanting him to succeed and expecting him to match up to his previous standards are hardly the same thing. 

The same can be said about another rumour, this time concerning Tierney. We all know the main reason he left, which was to avoid being maimed in Scotland with the tacit approval of the referees. I certainly didn’t blame him for wanting out, his career wouldn’t have lasted very long had he remained with us. He started very well indeed at Arsenal, and their fans certainly appreciated him. But then, for some reason, Arteta took a serious dislike to him and dropped him from his plans. I don’t suppose his various injuries helped; managers definitely prefer their players to be injury-free, not injury-prone. The rumour, as most of you will know, is that he has signed a pre-contract to join us in the summer, with the clubs currently negotiating a loan deal till the end of the season. 

Signing a left back is fast becoming a priority for us. Taylor shows no sign of staying on, and Valle is rumoured-that word again-to be on the verge of leaving for lowly Como in Italy. I presume he likes lakes because they aren’t much of a side, but that is for him and Barcelona to decide. It leaves us with only Scales and the teenager Frame as left backs on the books, so you can understand the urgency. But those injury concerns won’t go away,even if none of us would wish it to be the case. 

I don’t like discussing rumours,but the point of doing so in an article is that…

All in all, it has been a dreadful January transfer window so far. I wouldn’t go as far as to compare it to 2009, but it doesn’t seem to have been planned out in advance. So much for our new head of recruitment, for the manager with a plan and an eye for a player, for our CEO who is rapidly turning into the new absentee landlord. We’ve had an excellent season so far, and I’d hate to see it go up in smoke just because of some strange recruitment decisions. Every time I think the bad old days of ringing up the cash register at the first sight of a euro or pound note had gone, something always seems to bring them back into my nightmares. As ever, we have no say in the matter, no voice in the decision-making. But it doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it.

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Above article by BMCUWP