Michael Nicholson has missed out on another striker with Franko Kovacevic about to sign for Ferencvaros.
The Croatian striker has hit a rick vein of form with NK Celje but not too rich for the Slovenian’s to cash in during the transfer window.
January isn’t notoriously difficult if you have a plan and competent people involved.
Celtic have the gormless Nicholson waiting on instructions on what to do from his mentors.
A fee of 3m euros was enough to do business.
Kovacevic away to Ferencvaros now official.
3 striker links all evaporated in less than 48 hours. https://t.co/AEw0GnCdhV
— Eryk Szymczak (@SzymczakEryk) January 17, 2026
Kovacevic hasn’t had a stellar career, hence the price tag but has found goals easy to come by in the Slovenian League and UEFA Conference.
NICHOLSON CAN’T SEE A PROPER STRIKER
This season the 26-year-old striker has a total of 25 goals from 28 matches. He has 11 from 14 in the league, 5 from 6 in the UEFA Conference and scored 4 in 4 Europa League qualifiers as Celje dropped out.
It isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that Kovasevic could score regularly in Scotland.
Robbie Keane thinks the Croatian is decent. Ferencvaros have already qualifier for the knock-out phase of the Europa League and see Kovasevic helping them advance.
For £10m in the summer spent on Sebastian Tounekti and Michel Ange Balikwisha Celtic have had very little return.
Celtic fans have been speculating over the reasons for Celtic’s transfer failings.
SELL, SELL, SELL
Nicholson isn’t a complete failure, he is efficient at selling players off.
Kyogo Furuhashi, Adam Idah and Nicolas Kuhn were all sold over the course of seven months. Well into a third transfer window Nicholson has failed to bring in any striker close to being competent.
The Celtic CEO can expect to hear and see plenty of fan protests at Rugby Park today as Celtic face Auchinleck Talbot in the Scottish Cup.
After the match Martin O’Neill will come up with a fresh variation of a familiar theme. People are working really hard, progress has been made and O’Neill is hopeful of completing one or two deals shortly. Again.
? FRANKO KOVACEVIC
Szlovén sajtóértesülések szerint a #Celje és a #Ferencváros ? már megegyezett egymással Franko Kovacevic átigazolásának feltételeir?l.
? Az üzlet értéke nagyságrendileg 3 millió euró.
? A végleges igazoláshoz már csak a játékos szerz?dése és az orvosi… pic.twitter.com/0yUD5ZaF7A
— Fradiverzum (@fradiverzu1899) January 18, 2026
We used to be known to have the biscuit tin mentality.
Now we don’t even have a biscuit tin.
We just have an open packet of Asda own brand digestives with the top 3 or 4 biscuits soft due to being left open.
Just what exactly are the suits looking for?
A Messi or Lewandoski for Shankland money?
We could bring in 2 strikers for 5m or less and still be in a better place than we are now.
There must be a plethora of strikers available for that kinda money around the UK and Europe.
Whatever system they use, and I use the word system in the loosest possible terms, it is absolutely broken.
Either the system is flawed or those applying the system are flawed…or worse still, both are flawed.
If a clown car club like Sevco can bring in players with ease while we, with what? 70-90m surplus, piss around like amateurs in the dark, it really does bring into focus what an utter shambles our club is.
MON should be applauded for even wanting to be part of such a clusterfuck, because its only through a love of the club and the fans he does it, cos no other sane manager would come near us.
MON will have a couple of soundbites for The SMSM and will bemoan “difficult time to sign players” but will say “working really hard” Who is? Who’s working hard? Who’s actually physically dealing with The Recruitment of Players? Who’s currently negotiating with clubs? Or is it just “Everyone” as usual? Amateur or Grace Brothers doesn’t begin to describe it.
As a striker from an obscure league with a patchy scoring record he’d undoubtedly have been the ‘punt’ signing but we prefer to stick to a £2m ceiling for those. Callum Wilson scoring a crucial winner for West Ham yesterday surely means he’s either staying put or off to Saudi for petrodollars rather than becoming a ‘pension boost’ capture for us….. Things aren’t going well at all in this transfer window – the ‘panic’ signing will surely be hoving into view sooner rather than later….
M.Nico couldn’t find his hole in a brothel he would come out bent the rat see if prick sits and sits its about time the fans chased that board right down the Galloway honest they have killed our club to help newco ßhower of wankers on the celtic board brick them out ? RATS RATS RATS
WHY 2.6 million why could we not offer 3 million personal terms had been agreed so why did we lose out. Was it the board put in n offer of 1 million to show the fans they are trying or is it they just want to bring our club down. It doesn’t make sense we have been needing a striker since the summer everyone knows it so just pay the money to get them. I just feel sorry for Martin now he is a winner the board are going to throw him under the bus
Celtic tend to offer lowball bids and certainly don’t make a habit of increasing offers – I think the last time we were embarrassed enough to gazump another club was when we (allegedly) offered Dumbarton £30,000 for Steve McCahill only to learn that Clydebank had supposedly offered them more, leading to Celtic upping their bid to £100,000 to avoid being a laughing stock – which seemed a lot for a guy playing at that level, and the move certainly didn’t work out (he was badly shown up in a derby game if I remember rightly).
This, of course, occurred prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall…..
T’was always thus at Celtic and T’will always be at Celtic !