With every passing game and goal from Gary Hooper there are two questions that come to mind.
How much is he worth and why isn’t he in the Premiership.
The latter question can probably be answered by snobbery with clubs happier to throw millions at foreign signings rather than good old fashioned scouting and finding out where Scunthorpe is on the map.
How much is Hooper worth today? Probably much more than the £2.5m that Celtic are reported to have paid for his transfer in July.
A year ago Hooper was playing in the same league as Andy Carroll, Liverpool’s £35m signing.
Both players were born with a year of each other with Hooper turning 23 last week.
Over their season together in the Championship Hooper scored 19 goals from 31 starts and 4 substitute appearances. Carroll scored 17 goals from 33 starts and 6 substitute appearances as Chris Hughton’s side strolled to the title.
Newcastle scored 90 league goals last season, Scunthorpe scored 62.
In the real world away from Football Manager players values are decided by supply and demand, when the clocks ticks down on transfer deadline the value of a player, especially a striker, soars.
On Monday Carroll moved to Liverpool for £35m while Hooper checked into an Aberdeen hotel with his Celtic team-mates.
Taking the step up to the Premiership in his stride Carrol has bagged 11 goals from 18 starts and 1 substitute appearance. In 14 SPL appearances Hooper has scored 11 times.
The monetary value of Hooper is anyone’s guess- right now with a title and two other trophies up for grabs the former Scunthorpe striker is priceless to Celtic’s hopes of success.
Monday’s Premiership transfer frenzy brought the total spending for the month to over £200m. Fernando Torres, Darren Bent and Carroll accounted for more than half of that total.
Speaking in his Football Fancast column former Liverpool and Spurs defender Neil Ruddock was as shocked as anyone in the game at the January transfer dealings.
Ruddock said: “One of the key aspects to provide a sane transfer window is for every club to be sensible. Unfortunately that is never the case and Aston Villa ensured that there will be fun and games this January with a £24m deal for Darren Bent.
“While that fee could now be seen as a relative bargain in comparison to yesterday’s sales of Fernando Torres and Andy Carroll it initiated the proceedings as clubs reviewed their own pricing policy and used Bent’s fee as a reason to justify it.
“Would Newcastle ever have got any offers close to £35m for Andy Carroll at the start of January? I think you know that particular answer.
“The problem is when there is a set time frame like the January window, it is the selling club that holds all the cards. That is why so many chairmen leave it so late to conduct all their business as the final few hours sees the guard generally slip and suddenly move into a buyer’s market.”
Nothing in football lasts forever, one day Hooper will follow Henrik Larsson, John Hartson, Brian McClair, Charlie Nicholas and Kenny Dalglish out of Celtic Park.
Perhaps he could be moving on for the sort of fee that took Torres and Carroll away from the club’s that they were happy to sign long term contracts at as recently as October in the case of Carroll.
For now there’s no-one that the Celtic support would rather see leading the line than oo-ah Gary Hooper.
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Hooperman had been a sensation this season.
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His movement and strength are particularly good as is his awareness of Stoke’s whereabouts on the park.
They can only get even better! very promising!
Very impressive. His link up play is phenomenal. Those stats against Carroll last season as amazing.
Keep it up Hoops!!