Spot on - look at the cost of the other squads and you can see just how well our lads are doing. I know cost of player is not everything but it is a fair indicator. I think if we sign a forward then our record fee will go - sadly £3.5m does not get you much in the way of top league forwards and there is, as Supers pointed out repeatedly yesterday, little point in spending £3m on someone no beteer than our current back-ups.
in my opinion we've valued him correctly at £5m when you take into consideration his contract situation, but we all know strikers are expensive commodities and i don't think we could argue that £7m would be more or less what we'd expect to pay for a centre forward who will improve our team. juggling act as always but as long as we can afford the wages i don't see the fee being the main issue - its the wages which need to be reasonable
More than £5 mill for an ex scunny player with a couple of years experience in CCC/L1 Level SPL and a few first round champs Leauge games ? Rickie Lambert please
6m will do it i reckon. no it makes sense why we are apparently looking to offload jackson or one of the others to fund this
Obviously the money is there, but realistically we will probably end up with neither of these but CH obviously wants a decent striker in. So if we fail in these 2, then what!?
i really don't think we are looking to offload a striker. i think if we get one of the two we've bid for then its a possibility one may leave but i simply refuse to believe the club cannot afford this transfer fee. selling jackson, for example, would likely only raise £1m or so. much better to keep him till the end of the season as well. i don't doubt clubs are after him - charlton certainly are and the press are reporting wolves, but that doesn't mean they'll get him
"I've not spoken to him because I was with his representatives most of the morning. I'm sure they'll have a discussion later on. Our case is simple - you are not going." Neil Lennon now maybe i'm going mad but that does not sound like a man who thinks his man will stay. with his representatives most of the morning? If he wasn't interested it would be a "no thanks, not interested, bye bye". and the last bit screams of a panicking manager who knows he might lose his prized asset. i think we should wait to see Hooper's next move as i think it could come from him rather than us.
There is no way we should be paying 7 million pounds for Hooper, it is a truly stupid risk which I don't believe they will take. I think it may well be a more interesting this transfer window if we don't get Hooper or Graham.
I was having a browse on Celtics own forum and there are a few worries starting to creep in on there after that part of his comments were made. With the fact weve made a bid, you would assume Hooper would be willing to listen to what we have to offer and there must be some interest there from his side. From everything thats happened, it seems that if we stump up the £££ we will be granted discussions. We've bid £5mil, they supposedly want £8mil... £6.5-£7mil will get that i believe
we won't have made a bid without consulting his representatives to see if there is any point. there is obviously interest in talking to us but it is still down to celtic as to whether they accept any offer. however, that may change if hooper kicks up a fuss. not sure why carrabuh is complaining at the price. we've already bid £5m so a rise of two more is neither here nor there as far as i'm concerned - its his wages that we need to keep in check. if it went above £7m then i'd probably say 'leave it' but were it not for his contract running down, i'd say £7m would have been a fair offer in today's market. they paid around £3m i think and he's improved and continued to score goals. strikers don't come cheap! he's been banging them in in all competitions, even champions league, so i think he'd guarantee goals, though perhaps not as many as in scotland, for obvious reasons!
7 million for us would be silly money for such a risk. In my mind thats 2 potentially better foreigners. I'd rather spend 2million scouting Europe to find a better youngsters for 5 million, of which I'm certain there are many.
Thing is cArrabuh we may have done that, scouting Europe, and they couldn't find the right player who was available Why not trust the management team to get it right
basically, what you're saying is that 'gary hooper' isn't an exotic name really. he's a natural goal poacher and he's only 24 years old with a strike rate as good as anyone around, excluding the likes of messi and ronaldo - what more do you want? when i suggested we try and sign someone with a physical presence and loads of pace you laughed it off. it seems you'll only be happy if we sign someone with a fancy spanish name and even then, there are more guarantees that hooper will be a success than this foreigner you've set your heart on. if we want a goal scorer, and i'm pretty sure we all do, then we won't do much better than hooper or graham, at home or abroad.
i blame michu for this. some people think that there are loads of 'michus' all over europe, just waiting to be signed for tuppence. its not the case at all. if you want a good foreign player you generally have to pay good money for them. take traore from monaco who we were linked with recently - he plays in the french second division, yet they wanted £5m+ for him. good footballers don't come cheap, at least, not unless you're very lucky
I don't really get the sense in our two simultaneous bids; 1) Celtic and Swansea now know we have another £5 mil available, which is surely inviting them to hold out for a better offer 2) if we get to talk to them both next week they will have to decide if they want to compete with both holt and a club record expensive striker to even start.
1) that's true, although i think that one bid, probably the graham bid, has been made to force gary hooper's hand. 2) as i discussed on a different thread, if a player isn't prepared to fight for his place then he is not the kind of player we want. the whole point of buying a new forward IS to create competition for places. otherwise we should just stick with what we've got!
I think the simultaneous bids is to force the players, and not the clubs, into quicker action. Graham will probably know Hooper is desperate to get into the Premier League, and likewise Hooper probably knows Graham is friendly with Holt and isn't adverse to moving. Both know that realistically we'll only sign one of them. That forces the players involved to talk things through with their clubs, and try and force the move through if they really want it. At our end, it means that whilst £5m may seem fair for Graham, and slightly cheap for Hooper, it means that if the players really want to move, then the selling club have less time to try and inflate our bid. If Hooper decides that he really wants out, and will refuse to sign a new contract (albeit he's got 18 months to run), then Celtic may decide to cut their losses and take the money whilst they can. Apart from 2 Champions League games, it's not like they've a lot of competition this season, so they can look to build. With Swansea, if they are looking to sell, then it means that they can't try and hold out for more for too long, or we might sign Hooper and leave them stuck. Does that make sense/seem fair?
The potential re sale value of Hooper would be huge aswell, steven Fletcher came from hibs to burnley and then onto wolves for 6mil, they then doubled that and he's older. Imagine we get him now, we stay up with him contributing a few goals and then next season he could get 15+ he would be a striker about to go into his prime and potentially be in the england squad. Yes 7mil seems a lot to us now but if it was to work out it could be the best investment on the pitch in many of years.
