Will this transfer window deliver Celtic’s wish list?

January 14, 2014

Categories: Fans

It’s another transfer window and we’ve got more speculation regarding our main men.

Fraser Forster will going to most teams in the English Premier League. Virgil Van Dijk will be going to most of them, if not all of them. James Forrest and Efe Ambrose will no doubt be linked with moves away too.

They usually are so I suspect that last years “exclusive” headlines will be re-printed and they will again become “exclusive” stories. To be honest, I have got a bit fed up with transfer windows, why not just bring the old way back.

If a club want to sign a player, then they sign them. And don’t have to wait for several months. Apart from giving some people a good night of TV on the last day of it, I can’t really anything positive from the transfer window.

I guess because TV companies essentially run football, that’s the reason for the transfer window.

First up from our team, Joe Ledley and Samaras, they’re both in a slightly different position from the guys I’ve mentioned earlier as they can leave at the end of the season and both players can sign a pre contract agreement with any other club if they feel the desire to do so.

Of course with Celtic being the only “big” club in Scotland, our team will dominate the transfer headlines and I’ve already lost count of the players that we’ve already been linked with.

That said, I’m a bit disappointed that the usual suspects haven’t been lined up yet – Robbie Keane, Craig Bellamy and Shay Given are some of the usual contenders.

When you look at our team just now, I think we need some more creativity – I doubt many fans will disagree with that. I also think that Anthony Stokes needs a strike partner.

He played well up front with Gary Hooper and I don’t think he has become a bad player. I guess with the amount of time he spends outside of the box, it stands to reason that he wont score very many goals. It’s time to get Stokes back in the box and get him back to what he does best.

Although I never saw the games over in Turkey, I was aware that some of the younger players were given a chance so I hope that we are able to see more of them in competitive matches.

I was listening to a podcast on hailhail media recently, I can’t remember what one as I listen to most of them, but one of the guys was saying that, growing up, Gerry Creaney was one of their favourite players. It wasn’t because Gerry was a world beater but more because fans like to see a local lad who supports the team coming in to do a job.

For the record, Gerry did have a decent scoring record for us.

I am hopeful that some of our young players can get some competitive game time. For years, our youth teams have been pretty successful yet very few of them seem able to make the jump up from youth to first team player.

If they are far better than other players at 16 – 19 years old, why aren’t they better than the same guys in about 5 – 10 years down the line ?

I understand that not all players are going to make it but Scotland seems to be one of the few countries where a player is often deemed to be “too young” to play for the first team.

Never mind their age, do they have the ability or the potential ? Two contrasting examples of teams who are playing young players this season are Hearts and Dundee Utd.

I think both of those clubs show how difficult it can be to integrate young players. Hearts are not doing very well and Dundee Utd are doing very well in comparison.

Even for some of these young Hearts players who will very possibly end up relegated, some of them will be back in top flight football in a few years. By the time some of these guys will have maybe 50 – 100 first team appearances by the time they are no longer “too young”.

A lot has been made, not by any Celtic fans that I have spoken to, about the possibility of us going through a season with no defeats. Do any fans actually care about this record ?

I certainly couldn’t care less about this sort of record. Last season, I can’t remember how many points we ended up with. I know that we were league champions but I don’t know how many wins, losses and draws we had.

The reason I make that point is because I doubt that many fans will know this information without looking it up.

If we have the option of going through the season without any defeats or if we have the chance of having one or two defeats while unearthing a few young players, I know where my preference would lie.

I’ve also been critical of the teams performances this year and I have stated in this blog that I would like to see some new players come in but if that means a new player from our youth team instead of a new player from some other team, I’d be happy with that.