Granted Jelavic has been a success story as has Fletcher, though it took Fletcher until his Wolves spell to really get going. I've no doubt Hooper's a talented player, his goal record is great, but as I said previously, with you guys aside, the teams in the SPL are of a poor calibre - I generally don't believe any teams in the SPL bar yourselves could make the Championship and some even League 1 - we proved last season the gap in quality when we went Hearts and beat them 5-0 on their own turf and we barely came out of 2nd gear, we then gave about 5 academy players their debuts in the home leg and still looked a little better despite it being an awful game to watch in which Harry Kane (one of the debutants) missed a pen. Robbie Keane went on loan to you guys and scored 12 in 16 and yet could barely hit a barn door at the time with us in the Prem, I'm not deliberately being disrespectful to you guys or anything mate so apologies if it may across that way but the SPL is a far cry from the EPL. Hooper could well become an amazing signing for any team in the league if he was to leave Celtic but to be honest, I just wouldn't want us to be the team that pays £8m for him at the moment due to most of the players that have crossed the border in recent years. We had a mare with Hutton who was supposedly "the best performing RB" in Europe at the time and other top scorers from the SPL in Boyd, Miller, McDonald, Samaras etc have just been utter disasters in England.
Roo, as I said, we also need to be wary of overlooking our current players. You might not think that the likes of Sigurdsson, Dempsey, Falque, Townsend, Carroll, Livermore and Pritchard are good enough but 2 aren't even a year into their contracts with us and the others have performed well through the lower ranks and don't deserve to be shut out to the under 21s only whilst we sign two established midfielders that are going to be around for awhile. You might debate whether some of them are worthwhile keeping at all but buying a replacement before they're gone is a sure way to get back to where we were before with the likes of Bassong, Kranjcar, Pav, etc being not needed yet difficult to move on, wasting us money. Then there's the knock on effect on furture transfers, what youth player is going to sign for us when they see other talented players being overlooked and not getting chances? And what established players aren't going to think twice about a move when you could find yourself discarded within a year? As much as I want us to sign a Moutinho or a Willian, other than from a fans' point of view, it doesn't make any sense. With one £20mill buy we're almost discarding £14mill worth of summer signings as well as several youth players who we've spent time and money acquiring and training getting pushed further down the queue despite doing so well at every level they've been given a chance at. Not only is it unfair but you're looking at another £20mill potentially wasted all for improving our chances of getting into the top 4, which is already quite a good chance to be fair. As I said in the Leeds match thread, I really think we could do with using the game to find out whether these theories like Dempsey playing as the main striker and Pritchard getting involved in the first team have any legs. If we got Holtby in early we could also get an idea for whether he can play Dembele's role. If not then we still have the time to act and get in new players. If we do spend money in this window I'd rather it be after we gave those already here a chance.
So many Emperor's new clothes in football and Hutton is a classic example. Talked up to amazing heights by the media and then we sign this fairly ordinary player who produced the odd moment of pseudo excitement but in reality is a clogger. We have history! That's why I think at this stage we have to bite the bullet and spend the silly amount to sign a proven striker the very best we can persuade to sign. 20 million in the context of the money for places in the PL is not a lot. If we sign another nearly man we do not do justice to the quality in our team and risk shooting ourselves in the foot. How much money did we lose last season by being a point short of 3rd place!
Maybe we should jump the queue on Viktor Fischer of Ajax? I haven't seen that much of him, but he looks a big prospect already. Probably one of those that we'd balk at paying £6m or £7m for now and then get quoted £20m for him in a couple of seasons.
With all due respect to Hooper & Celtic fans, I don't want to be harsh on Scottish football, as living in Scotland I witness the "football!" played and the pundits practically cream themselves over Georgios Samaras, a player they consider to be a special talent. The current top scorer in the SPL, is Billy Mackay, playing for the mighty Inverness caley thistle, who incidentally sit second in the table behind that "great" team celtic, trailing by 9 points. The second top scorer in the SPL, is a wolves reject, Leigh Griffiths with 15 goals. To give you an idea of how poor the standard in the SPL is, in terms of defending, Billy Mackay scored 19 goals in 73 games for Northampton town and is now the top scorer in the SPL. ..... Hooper may well be a player that can step up to the premier league, could surprise us all and who needs RVP when you have the SPL's 5th top league scorer this season?..........(smile)
YV, you've not taken my first post into consideration mate. I did state that "the bench is either too weak, or has young + inexperienced players on it". - the latter part (young and inexperienced) not being the issue. I want these youngsters to get chance. I've said on many occasions this season how I'd like to see Falque given more opportunities, as well as Carroll. I don't think we've seen the best out of Sig either. I guess what I'm saying is I'd like to see Hudd and Livermore out and Moutinho and Holtby in. therefore regardless of who plays, we've got youngsters on the bench to gain experience, as well as some quality to make a difference.
That would leave us with one defensive midfielder though since Sandro's out for the season. I would've been happy for Livermore to go out on loan before Sandro got injured but to still shift him on and replace he and Huddlestone, who haven't featured much with 2 players who are going to expect to start regularly is of course going to have an affect on those further down the pecking order. You wanted to see Dembele, Holtby and Moutinho being rotated between 2 of the roles in midfield, I don't see how that can't have a knock on effect for Dempsey and Sigurdsson and in turn putting our younger talent further from the first team then they are already.
Completely agree Boss . I'm sure Hooper can be a decent player but at the moment, especially in Jan, we need someone proven at a higher level, too many SPL players have flopped over here for me to be optimistic at the chances of their success. If we were to sign Hooper, I'd rather in the summer so he can have a pre-season, rather than getting him now and expecting him to perform straight away without no real time to gel.
Hooper be mad to move anyway, as while the SPL is dire, Celtic are a huge club, he will get champions league football every year, pay rise, star status and tons of winner medals. Leave all that for what? norwich? and maybe one england cap in a useless engalnd team if he does fairly well. ...Unless of course he actually thinks he can prove humself here but he won't be allowed much time to settle.
1 defensive player...not strictly speaking, as Moutinho is box to box and Dembele is a very strong player with good defensive qualities. - the work rate of both of them is ridiculous and they cover so much ground; we'd always have numbers back. Also, it'd allow us to play AVB's preferred formation and we wouldn't be restricted to 442 like we currently are. Maybe I'm going a bit overboard with the squad, but it's great squad's that do well. for years we've had big squad's but they have been full of mediocrity all over the place. Now, we have 2 positions that need filling/replacing and we've got a squad of similar size, which is full of a mixture of up and coming top talent and exciting youth players.
Brings me back Charlie Austin who I suggested the other day. Celtic are looking at Charlie Austin if Hooper leaves. If it is believed that the SPL is of such a low standard when compared to the English leagues, I'd rather we were looking at Charlie Austin, who's scored 20 odd already in what is a very competitive championship league. I'm not saying i want us to sign charlie Austin, I'm merely suggesting that i'd trust the championship a lot more as we know much more about the standard.
"theres only one charlie austin" ringing around the lane as he links up with Obika to score the winner that takes us top.....can already imagine it Roo! .....no, joking aside, I be happy also for us to take a punt on a young player from the lower leagues,rather then sign a "star" that excels in a premier league, which is of a lower standard then the championship. Also players in the Spl tend to be snapped up by league 1/ championship clubs while players that stuggle in the english lower leagues move to the Spl and look like stars.
LOL you joke, but I've actually sung that in the stands at Swindon! Someone in the prem should take a punt, even if its not us! Given the service, he'll score plenty of goals.
You can call Dembele and Moutinho defensive but just because they can tackle(like Modric) you're not playing them to their talent. What's worked in our midfield in the last 3 seasons is having a midfielder who's principal ability is in breaking up play alongside one who's able to bring the ball forward into attack. Arsenal are the only side in the top 6 who don't play a proper holding midfielder and look where that gets them. We don't really play a 442 either, there's far more movement in our play to call it that and I don't think AVB has so much of a preferred formation as a preferred philosophy. I'm not saying that Moutinho wouldn't improve our squad but what I'm saying is that spending a lot of money on him and overlooking what we have is wasteful and a bit disrespectul to the players that are here now. Players will never make a break through if we don't give them the chance to. Of course we all want a great squad but we can't get there by simply buying one like some other teams can. We don't have the money to be wasting £14mill on two players(Dempsey and Sig) only for them to be battling it out for the same place on our bench 6 months down the line, or to spend £80mill doing up our training facilities if we don't seriously look to bring through players to supplement our senior players.
I think we're making similar points YV but are miscommunicating somehow. Lets leave it there mate. I take back what I said about big signings. - we've just announced a loss.
