Nicolas Kuhn

I don't think I've ever said we should be competing with Juventus or Inter Milan for signatures. I'd be surprised if anyone else is, either.

I'm also not trying to shoehorn anything. I have said multiple times on here, Premier League aside, we can and should be competing with lower end teams from Germany, Spain, Italy and France for players and higher end teams outwith the giants in places like Holland, Belgium and Portugal.

I think we discussed in the summer window about young Holm. I like Holm and I think he could have a good career here but he was the completely wrong signing for our midfield and the wrong time to bring him in. When the club was crying out for a bit of experience in the midfield, we turn to a young man from Norway with less than 70 appearances under his belt. We spent a good amount of money on him too, nearly £3m. All while the midfielder we should have been going for in Norway, Hugo Vetlesen, a direct replacement for Mooy, young enough at 23 who was the absolute definition of experience(over 220 games in Norway) was heading over to Belgium to play with Club Brugges for £1.5m more.

I think your fixating on two largely differing areas without admitting there is a multiple places in between. I'm not asking us to compete with Juventus, Inter Milan or even teams like Atalanta/Roma. I'm not asking us to compete with any Premier League club. I'm not asking us to compete with teams like Valencia, Villareal, Real Betis or Sevilla. Or any of the bigger, better German teams.

I am asking us to compete against the likes of Lecce, Genoa, Bologna. Or Almeria, Granada and Osasuna from Spain. Or Reims, Montpellier or Toulouse in France. I'm asking us to compete with Braga and Sporting, not Benfica and Porto. I'm asking we compete with the Belgian Clubs. All of them. I'm asking we compete with some of the Dutch teams, Ajax and PSV aside.

That shouldn't be difficult. Especially when we have as high a turnover, if not more than the vast majority of these teams. Our problem is the refusal to spend money on players who can and will move us on. The argument that gets put is fair. Players prefer to play in Spain or Italy or Portugal. No one is denying that. But there are large numbers of players who fall into the category I'm describing, who would jump at the chance to come here. Kuhn obviously falls into that category.

I've said many times. It's not usually about the money we spend but the way we spend it. In the argument of Kuhn, we are lead to believe he's performed very well over the last couple of seasons in Austria and had a very successful season in the Bundesliga 2 the season before that. While he's not 'experienced'... he does look like he has 'quality'... which is exactly what I'm talking about. He's also at an age where he's done well for 2/3 seasons and is now looking to push on and he still has potential to nurture and expand on, which is done through coaching. Again, no problem with that. Rapid wanted £3m, they have it. If he had been £4.5m, my opinion of it wouldn't have changed. We should still buy him because he looks very good and adds something entirely different to our wing play.

 

Ssssshhhhhhhh

 

Must have been some bruise..

 

Considering he was out for 4 days with a muscular injury

 

Turns out the banger on Clydessb last night was from transfermrkt take anything there with linch salt.

But it's taking ages to get this announced!

 

Probably be announced on stv at 6. But * me we take our time. No like we're signing a record breaker here

 

Sorry mate but the only part of this that addresses my point is

Which is absolutely not true. Some people are adamant that playing in Scotland is irrelevant for players when making a decision on who to sign for. Some even suggesting it's solely down to money.

And again, the main point is that higher calibre players are less likely to want to come here as they'll usual have similar offers from much better leagues.

Whether or not we're targeting the right players is a different conversation, one which focuses on how well our scouting system is operating. But if we go for players in say the £10 million bracket, the odds of us landing them diminish massively.

This was never going to be an issue with Kuhn so bringing it up in this thread was pointless at best.

 

I assume we're trying to get another one or two deals done so we can announce them all together.

 

They need time to get the photos, do interviews, make a wee video, write a news post. Then get it all checked and publish it.

 

Come on now

 

It's not pointless at best.

Kuhn had offers to play in Italy, in the top league. He has chosen to come here, over playing and living in Italy. Regardless of whether or not he was at £3m instead of £8m, he has chosen to come and play here, not in Italy.

Players will go and play in Belgium over Italy/Spain/Germnay. They'll go and play in Holland over Italy/Spain/Germany.

I've said before, the scouting isn't good enough and needs to be better. Especially with the price we can and should be paying for players.

 

It does feel like the scouting department is too small.

It feels to me like we rely on agents bringing affordable players to our attention. To be fair, I don't know if that's the way of it now or if it's because we should be doing a lot better.

I wasn't surprised when it turned our Nerlinger was his agent, someone who knows a bit about our market and probably brought him to our attention and helped make the deal happen.

 

Scenes when we drag this out for another two weeks and present it as our big marquee deadline day signing.

 

Just Get it Announced Celtic forever Dragging the Life out New arrivals

 

You know what they say about assuming, eh?

 

Or maybe he saw us as a potential stepping stone to the EPL. Or maybe he wants to play in Europe’s elite competition that is the Champions League.

All these selling points we have that can help us attract players. Incredible.

 

Are we ever trying to compete with the likes of Juve and Inter for players? They are shopping in a different market to us.

The fact is, we are a massive club with a lot of good selling points. The league we play in of course holds us back, but there are plenty players out there who would happily sign for us if the money is right. Plenty who would improve the team.

If we actually showed some ambition and perhaps progressed in Europe, even to reach the Europa League, which should have been an achievable goal this year, we would also find it easier to attract better players. That takes some sort of ambition at board level though, which we don’t have.

 

I immediately think of Wayne Mardle commentating on the best leg of of darts you will ever see when I see those three words together