I thought this was old news and then Hooper (er the Scottish player!) turned QPR down on personal terms. Oh I don't know what to think now. It would be curious is he moveed from Celtic to QPR as that would be hoops to hoops.
It's getting to to the stage that the "Hooper Affair" is resembling a West End Farce or a Chuckle Brothers sketch. Will he, won't he, has he, hasn't it, is he, isn't he ? Quite frankly it's time to set up or shut up and then move on.
Given the bid is ~£5m i think we should just match it, seems a reasonable amount when you consider this scoring record not just ing the SPL but in Europe, and we were seemingly willing to go higher than this in january.
That price seems fair to me too. Either way, hopefully this accepted bid will get this whole saga over and done with.
The question I have is if you were Hooper do you find yourself in a catch 22? You want to move to push England prospects, so Celtic want to unload you to get some money. But the highest bidder is a Championship club. If you stay you might not play, but if you go you end up not playing at the right level. Hopers agent needs to put his short term financial gain behind the long term prospects of what might come from having an England international on your books.
i think its the add ons that are the problem. qpr are offering all kinds of add ons which take the potential fee way over £7m. it's nothing to do with his agent at all. its simply down to us standing our ground, not willing to match celtic's very high asking price. we are all biased so its difficult to see things from celtic's point of view but although it seems to us they are being greedy, at the end of the day they've found someone willing to pay what they want so you can't really blame them for asking us to pay the same. we'll have to wait and see if the player fancies the move. i doubt he will but he might feel he hasn't much choice now.
Celtic and QPR are deliberately trying to hardball us, everything we offer QPR up the stakes by half a million, we should let the motherfuckers play their silly games. Either way I can't see anything happening till after this tour.
If he genuinely wants to play Prem football, he'll say to us "look, pay me £10k pw less than what you were previously offering for a four year deal and raise your bid by £2m" or variations thereof.
it doesn't work like that!! we can't open discussions with the player till we've struck a deal with his club. we'll have a good idea what he wants and where he wants to go but you can't strike deals like that! and why would a player give up half a million a year? i bet you wouldn't, no matter what league you played in
its been nothing but games since january. remember that qpr have to offer celtic as much as they can to stop us bidding and offer the player big bucks to persuade him to join. their best bet is to bid way over the top so that we give up the chase and then offer him £40k+ a week
(a) I was joking and (b) actually it can work like that (though obviously not literally or as simply) - see for example Fabregas and Arteta - both assisted a move to their current clubs by agreeing to a pay cut to facilitate the buyer matching the asking price. These deals are many-party negotiations and Hooper's agent will have been kept informed (after all, it is in Celtic's interest - they get the asking price and won't care how much Hooper is or isn't paid). In any event, Hooper mightn't technically be taking a pay cut because his wages aren't massive at Celtic.
If there's a problem between the clubs and it comes down to QPR brin able to afford him but us not maybe its a weird terms of sale related to money. If its a case of we have to pay Celtic a zillion pounds when he gets his first England cap or something similar it would be hard to accept. QPR on the other hand are a joke and Portsmouth mkII do they'll pay anything. I would not judge the club on the terms of the sale because clearly we don't know all the facts, all we really can do is say if we rate him as a player or not
from what a few people on hulls forum are saying who seem informed, he and his agent are looking for silly money for his wages though. I say be done with it. He's untested at this level, and its getting silly now. If he wants to play in the PL, sit on his contract till Jan at Celtic. If he wants the money, go to QPR, which i think he will. (its fun reading QPR posters justify his move as 'career minded' and not all about the money, suggesting they are a more attractive proposition than us as they are going to try to get promoted, where as we are a yo yo club who will likely be going down. Just goes to show, you can take the QPR out of the PL, but you can't take the ego out of the QPR.
Interesting, but I've no doubt his agents are looking for silly money! That's why the real question is how much Hooper actually wants to play in the Premier League. If money isn't his sole motivation, he can make small efforts to assist... Who are QPR?
Lambert is quicker, younger, stronger and probably has slightly more technical ability than Holt. Plus he is pretty mean from a dead ball situation. If we can get someone in Holt's mould but slightly better than him, then I say go for it. Lambert would be great back up to RvW.
He's 10 months younger and was, IMO, no better than Holt in his first PL season. For a fee likely to be in the region of 5m..no thanks!
