Celtic and friends left exposed by Busaspor reality check

At lightening pace the favourite media partners of Celtic jumped to the defence of the club over Kelechi Iheanacho.

In glorious fashion at the end of the week the eight week chase to sign Kelechi Iheanacho came to a conclusion. In failure. Hardly a surprise with Michael Nicholson leading negotiations.

The cunning plan of offering the striker 50% of last season’s deal blew up. Nicholson hoped that no-one else would come in for Iheanacho.

On Friday he signed a three year deal with Bursanspor.

Shortly after Minutes from a meeting with the AICSC revealed that Nicholson considered dealing with free agents was the easier part of his job.

In a salvage job Celtic’s media partners were contacted.

The Daily Record, Herald and The Sun were all onboard for the trip to Portugal. Plenty of access. Friday was payback time. Iheanacho the target.

On the back of a jolly to Portugal, the Four Amigos had been given daily access to players then topped off with a boozy night out with Martin O’Neill.

The lads answered the call in style.

ALL TOGETHER NOW- ON CUE WITH THE CELTIC MESSENGERS

Gannon of the Record claimed:

Record Sport  understands the Hoops balked at Iheanacho looking for a blockbuster package of £50k per week – way beyond the top earners at the club.

The Hoops  offered the Double winning hero a two-year contract despite allowing the automatic one-year extension option to expire at the end of June.

But the ambitious Turkish second-tier outfit – who won promotion last term – stepped in offering big dosh to bag the 29-year-old on a three-year deal.

Over at the Herald Josh McCafferty was playing a similar tune:

When announcing Iheanacho’s arrival last September, Celtic confirmed they had the option to extend his initial one-year deal by a further 12 months.

But they sought to renegotiate this summer, and we understand a deal worth £12,000 per week – rising to £17,000 per week with add-ons – was initially agreed for Iheanacho to remain at Parkhead before an official contract was signed.

His agent then stopped responding to phone calls or emails, before returning to the table earlier this week demanding a contract worth £47,000 per week.

Less than 48 hours later, Iheanacho had signed for Bursaspor in Turkey’s second division on a three-year deal worth £47,000 per week.

Incredible how McCafferty could come up with such in-depth detail.

It sounds like he had the same source as Gannon, just a slight variation on the script.

The briefest of checks with contacts in Turkey would have confirmed how realistic those figures were.

No one at Bursaspor is getting close to £50,000 a week. If that was on offer they’d attract better players than Iheanacho.

On June 5 the Record, Herald and Sun all announced exclusively at 5pm that Martin O’Neill had agreed a new 12 month contract at Celtic.

On June 11 the official announcement was made.

When Celtic do get around to making a signing it seems certain that the Record and Herald will both be in on it.