Virgil van Dijk

Agents are all * but these * always act under the players instructions let not pretend otherwise.
His agent is under orders...get me to the epl,while the player does the normal......oh i love it here.....fans are best in the world....such a big family here...blah blah blah.
Maybe its time for celtic to say....look we understand you want to make it to the epl and that is ok but in order to make it worth while you must sign a 6 year contract with us and we will let you go after 3 years,that way you get your move and we get some money back and also have a chance to build a bit of a team.

 

And what if he simply says no to such a proposition?

 

I'm pretty sure he would say no. It's hard to see what would be in it for him.

Look, I'm as sad as anyone else that he doesn't even want to stay two seasons, he's a fantastic player; but if he wants to go that much, let him go. He gets his big move to the EPL and we get appropriate compensation...and we start the cycle all over again with some other young talent.

Ah, the joys of beng an EPL feeder club...

 

There have been a couple of threads on here about how we should follow the Porto model to be more successful. Buy cheap and sell at a profit. This is what we would be doing with Virgil and have previously done with Vic.

With a bit more money in the bank hopefully would could do this at a higher level and afford to keep the players a little longer. For us this is the reality of modern football.

On the plus side, we may be of interest to players who have refused us previously as a better stepping stone(one with CL football) to the top EPL teams and the big money.

 

He is better than Vidic right now.

I honestly think he'd go straight into Manure's first XI.

 

Dreading the big man going, agents are absolute *! Hopefully he's still here next season

 

Not sure how much money we already have will come into it tbh. We have great people at the club on the business side. They'll follow the money and the development plan. If we have our eyes on the 'next Van Dijk' and the cost of both players falls far enough below what we'd get for VD we'll take it. That's the growth strategy we're following just now.
Main reason we wont take a low bid however is that the moneymen know we have a major asset on our hands, just like wanyama. Id guess both will go for about the same, but a little higher with the length of contract left. Id want 20M but I think we'll settle for 15M

 

I would much prefer our best players to stay at Celtic but the reality is we will sell on our top talent.

The fact that we make millions out of it is brilliant. We all wish we could build a team of class players that all come to the club and stay but it isn't like that. Maybe in a few years things will be different but we are going into a brighter and more promising place on and off the field with every passing season.

It all depends on what you look at. The fact we missed out on 2 domestic cups, waited till January to replace a top goal scorer and had a * CL campaign combined with a quite boring saunter onto another league title.

Or the fact that we're onto a 3rd consecutive league title, onto a 3rd consecutive CL season, set to make tens of millions of pounds of transfer fees and European football (again!) and generally enjoy life as a Tim whilst the rest of Scottish football seems to have read the memo and got to what looks like they're getting the act together.

And who can tell me the prospect of some European trips in the sun this summer for qualifiers doesn't sound like money well spent?

 

We seem to be all very quick to get Virgil to Old Trafford or elsewhere in England . Why did he agree last summer to sign a four year deal if he is going to leave after one year . Surely a contract must be worth something and by the way he plays and by the smile on his face it appears to me that he isn't exactly hating it in Scotland . The only thing I have heard the player say is that N Lennon wanted to build the team round him and he was fine with that .
I am not saying he will stay the whole four years but I expect him to stay to summer 2015/16 at least .

 

I've seen this quite a bit recently. About bringing players in at a higher level and taking it to the next step. However, we have got more money in the bank than we did a few years ago, yet we have spent less on our strikers than we did with Hooper. I'm not saying money guarantees a better player, but we have tried to replace him on the cheap. If we are looking to do this at a higher level, why not do it all over the park. We done it with other positions, but not up top, and we paid the price this year in Europe.

 

The problem is, it's not just a case of looking for a striker who's worth £5 million and buying him, is it?

You can bet that any striker who has a decent record and is coming in at that price range will have lower Premiership and top level championship teams sniffing around him, and more times than not they'll be able to top whatever we can offer as far as wages go.

 

So are we stuck with only realistically being able to go after strikers with a value of around £2-2.5m? What we paid for Hooper.

 

Basically, we're probably only going to get someone that isn't drawing any interest from teams who fall into the categories I mentioned above.

 

Not always though, we did get Wanyama instead if Aston Villa. Champions League is a major draw.

 

Are we talking strikers alone here?

Because I'm pretty certain there was EPL teams interested in Ledley, Lustig, & Van Dijk.

 

The biggest draw for Ledley was Roma, who we managed to beat to get him.

 

That's why I said probably. There will be the odd exception where a player prefers to stay in an English-speaking country, where there are family issues with going abroad and suchlike, and where we can offer maybe a longer contract or more money than an English team is willing to offer.

For the most part though, if a foreigner is looking to come to the UK to ply his trade England will be his first choice destination. It's unfortunate, but true for the most part.

Who would want to play in the SPFL when they can play in the Premiership, or even the Championship? All things being equal as far as money being offered, most players would play down south before they would Scotland.

 

I'm not disagreeing with you, because unfortunately you're spot on. I just think it's madness that some players would rather play in the Championship than for Celtic.

Of course I'm biased so I'd also play for Celtic over a lot of EPL sides, but I just don't think you can beat the feeling of winning trophies.

 

It does depend but on the subject of Van Dijk and Derk Boerrigter they both viewed it as moving to a Champions League club and said so in their interviews.

 

The thing is, the Championship provides just as much, if not more money in many instances, and it also provides a platform for a move to a bigger English club if they perform well.

As we've seen at Celtic, you can be our top scorer or one of our best players and still not get any offers above the likes of Southampton or Norwich.