In less than 24 hours Celtic’s interest in Tommy Smith turned into a ‘saga’.
Tuesday’s performance away to Sarajevo highlighted the glaring need to bring in a right-back with Tony Ralston left on the bench and a new defensive system tried out against the Bosnian champions.
Reports of Smith leaving Huddersfield’s training ground surfaced on Wednesday night, a week ago that would have been given a lukewarm response but with the season underway any sort of right-back will be an improvement on the current options.
Just as excitement was peaking the bearer of bad news appeared with the Daily Record reporting that Smith was off to Staffordshire to sign for Stoke and another bubble was burst, Smith’s name scored off the summer transfer secret dossier.
Or was he? At 8.30am those upstarts at the Huddersfield Examiner claimed that their man was still in Austria with no plans in place to swap his blue and white stripes for red and white.
Now it seems that he is bound for Stoke with The Examiner reporting dramatic developments through the day, it looks like the Record was right all along- just a day ahead of schedule for his move to Staffordshire!
If/wen Smith raises the red and white scarf above his head it’ll be hats off to the Record, as Celtic’s hunt for a right back enters another day/week/month.
No doubt taking a dim view of all this is Sky Sports reporter Andy Dickson, he popped off to enjoy a day in the sunshine at the All England Club and had his day ruined by the sight of a Selik tap! Oh dear, poor Andy, hadn’t he suffered enough being inside Ibrox and having to TUPE his contract over to Charles Green’s tribute act?
Hopefully Andy isn’t a follow follower of Albanian politics, if he is he’d be horrified to see what President Ilir Meta wears to cabinet meetings
