Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou in his press conference today confirmed that he is currently not attempting to bring in any more players in the January transfer window.
But as some have pointed out, he was very clever with his choice of words, using phrases like “as we speak right now” and “if anything changes I’ll let you know” when talking about the fact he isn’t currently interested in or speaking with any players to bring to the club.
The press didn’t quite pick up on these phrases though, they all jumped to the headlines of ‘Ange says no more signings!’
As the manager said during that press conference, he doesn’t lie. So he was always going to try to make out that business was done for Celtic without definitely saying that, and hope the press ate it up, and they absolutely did.
Make no mistake, the Riley McGree situation will have pissed him off. A player that he knew personally, that he has worked with before and that he spoke to about coming to Celtic, and then the player ultimately going to Middlesbrough instead when a deal with us looked to have been all but done. He won’t want a repeat of that again.
If we are interested in a player and attempt to sign him during the remainder of this window, he will want it kept under wraps and out of the press. The last thing he wants is other clubs being alerted to the availability of a player we are trying to sign.
And other clubs will now know, that if Celtic and specifically Ange are trying to sign a player, chances are they will be a very good player and at a very good price, as his track record so far at Celtic has proven.
The deal for McGree was apparently going to cost us around £2.5m up front, and end up being double that in further instalments. That clearly shows Ange wasn’t just looking to sign him because he just popped up as being available and ‘why not?’ It shows that Ange wants to further strengthen in that area of the park and was prepared to invest quite significantly in doing so. I find it very hard to believe because we missed out on McGree that Ange feels we no longer need to strengthen there.
There are still two and a half weeks left of this window. We aren’t done yet.
