Virgil van Dijk

And you can be one of the top scorers in the Championship and get a move to another Championship team like Charlie Austin did.

 

Of course, but the bottom line is, our league isn't viewed as being all that attractive, especially when the English league is very close and you can get the same, if not more money.

I'm not entirely sure how much of a draw six Champions League games are, especially when you have around 40 odd * domestic games to play.

Are you arguing that we won't find it more difficult to sign quality players within our budget when there's English teams sniffing around with similar wage deals on offer?

 

You have totally missed the point I was making. You were talking about the Championship providing a similar or better platform than us in terms of moving to a Premier League team. You pointed that out by saying about our best players going to the likes of Southampton & Norwich. So I challenged that part about the Championship as there was Charlie Austin last year, a player who scored goals for fun in the Championship, but only managed to get himself a move to another Championship side.

To be fair, can you name many players who have moved from Championship sides, to teams higher in the League than Southampton that play regular first team football?

 

I was saying that this is how players would perhaps see it.

Look, I'll sum it up for you.

If we are looking to sign a decent quality player in the £3 million to £5 million bracket in the summer we aren't just tasked with identifying a target, we also have to combat the fact that the majority of players in that range will most likely have English sides sniffing around them as well, who can offer similar if not better wages than we can.

If someone is interested in coming to Celtic you can bet their agent will be alerting all of the English sides as well, in the hope that they can land a deal with a club willing to pay higher wages, and who is playing in a higher profile set-up.

Our league isn't attractive. Even less so now we don't have the world famous "old firm derby" that attracted some attention in the past.

We can offer a player a decent wage, some Champions League games and some Scottish silverware.

A lot of times that won't be enough when we're competing with sides from one of the best football leagues on the planet.

I guarantee that we lose at least one or two targets this summer to lower level EPL sides. It's a given.

 

You aren't telling me anything I don't already know. You have completely ignored the point I made about the Championship providing a better platform than us in regards to players looking to move to the EPL. You made it look as though that is your opinion, so I challenged it. You spoke about our top scorer only getting a move to Norwich, so I countered that by saying about Charlie Austin, who couldn't even get a move to a Premier League team, even though he was one, if not the top scorer in the Championship last year.

Can you name any player who has moved from the Championship, that is playing with a team better than Southampton, and holding down a regular first team position?

 

James McCarthy :icon_mrgreen:

 

I'd go further and say the Championship itself is a much more attractive proposition than the SPL, even leaving aside the possibility of a move to the EPL.

1) The standard of football is higher than the SPL (outwith ourselves), so you're testing yourself more.

2) The chance to play in much better surroundings:

The Championship is full of clubs far bigger than any in Scotland (apart from ourselves and Rangers). Based on this year's attendances, the SPFL's biggest club (apart from us) is Hearts with 14k, there are 16 clubs bigger than this in the Championship. Plus, I doubt Hearts really get 14k any more than we really get 47k!

3) The cups:

It may have lost caché in recent years; but the FA cup ist still by far the most prestigious cup competition in the world. Both cups offer the chance (if you do sufficiently well) to play some of the biggest clubs and best players in the world.

4) The trophy itself:

The Championship is such a hard league to get out of that it was arguably a more prestigious trophy than the SPL trophy for quite some time. I don't think it was but I think most people south of the border would disagree with me. At any rate, with the demise of Rangers, it definitely is more prestigious. If we were in the Championship, I'm not sure we'd win it! We'd definitely be challenging but it would be a real fight- compare that with the SPFL.

All in all, if a Championship club can match or better our wages, you can see why we might actually lose out.

Against all those advantages, all we have is:

1) We are Celtic: one of the most famous clubs in the world (but then so are Nottingham Forest and Leeds Utd!).
2) The CL (if we qualify)

In summary, I think it's actuall pretty tight when you compare our draw with that of the bigger clubs in the Championship even before thinking about possible moves to the EPL. Wages could well be the deciding factor!

 

We provide a much better route to top class football than the championship. The point I was initially making that by moving to a top EPL side Virgil will be the perfect example of this. By moving to Celtic a foreign player will be able to ply his trade in the CL(or at worst the EL) and still be in the shop window for EPL teams. How many championship teams have sold as many players to the EPL over the last 12 months. We have Hopper, Vic and Ledley. Add to that the whole point of this thread in Virgil and we would obviously be the wise mans choice.

 

Virgil will end up at a mid-table EPL side most likely.

 

He had already proven himself as a Premier League player to be fair.

 

Even if he does players will still have a better chance of an EPL transfer playing with us.

 

Okay, so we're now debating over who can be a better feeder club for the mighty EPL now? :smiley-laughing002:

 

That's exactly what it looks like you're both doing.

 

It was already a topic to which I just added an opinion.

 

That quote from me doesn't say anything about the Championship providing a move to the Premiership though, does it? It simply says that playing in the Championship is more attractive to most than playing in the SPFL.

 

Maybe I should have used the above one then.

 

There have been numerous threads on this forum talking about how the English view the SPFL and Scottish football in general.

The top goalscorer in the Championship is given more credibility in England than the top goalscorer in the SPFL most of the time. The Championship is considered of a higher quality than the Scottish league.

 

I have not expressed a view in favour nor against this argument.

My only point is that we are a much better proposition for a player than a championship team.

 

Sorry to keep bringing this up, but here are a list of the top scorers last year in the Championship.

1. Glenn Murray
2. Jordon Rhodes
3. Charlie Austin
4. Matej Vydra
5. Chris Wood
6. Troy Deeney.

The year before last.

1. Ricky Lambert
2. Ricardo Vaz Te
3. Billy Sharp
4. Ross McCormack
5. Matty Fryatt

Only 1 of that full list actually got a transfer to a Premier League team that didn't go up. That was Vydra. The rest of them either stayed at the club they were with when they went up, or were still playing in the Championship the following season.

 

And the likes of Vaz Te, Lambert, Rhodes & Murray all are given more credibility than the guys who do the business in the SPFL.

You've fixated on this one small point about transfers when the main point is that we're going to have the issue of English clubs being more appealing to most of our top signing targets in the summer.

Our best player at the moment has his agent making noises about wanting away after a year to play in England.