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The news broke late last night that Celtic’s Greek striker Giorgos Giakoumakis could be set for an exit from the club in the January transfer window, after talks broke down for a new contract.

Apparently, Giakoumakis wants more money than what he has been offered and what he feels he deserves.

Now, we could dismiss that as the press making up stories or forces trying to unsettle us.

It may well be, it has happened in the past and it could well be happening again now.

But I’m here to offer an alternative view, and it something I believe could very well be at play here.

I think Celtic could be leaking this info to the SMSM and others, not through one ‘bad egg’, but as part of the club’s transfer strategy, for our player trading model in order to drum up interest in players that we want to cash in on.

The same story broke about Juranovic recently, and this was after speculation in the summer about him potentially moving on, but then shortly after the news broke of him turning down a new contract, it became very apparent that Celtic had already lined up his replacement after agreeing a deal to sign Canada’s World Cup right back Alistar Johnston.

And the same thing with Giakoumakis, literally in the same night, minutes apart, the two stories were released, that Giakoumakis was expected to leave in January, and that Celtic are apparently keen on bringing in South Korea striker Cho Gue-Sung.

To me, it looks like Ange has identified players that he believes can make us better, and to bring them in we need to sell to bring in as much money as possibly to fund the deals and get as much money as possible into the club, so we are letting clubs know these guys are available to leave in January for the right price.

These guys are on five year deals, we clearly don’t need to be re-negotiating deals from then 18 months in.

It seems to me, that we are going into these negotiations for a new deal almost hoping that they will break down, so that the player wants to leave to get better money elsewhere and it is not seen like we are forcing them out of the club, and if it leaks that they want more money, that typically shows the player in a bad light rather than the club, and therefore when that player leaves, the club typically doesn’t get the same type of backlash as it would if we were seen to be forcing these players out who were happy here.

A reminder of one of the lines from Ange at the recent AGM:

“We will need to move players around to make gains. We have to maximise our squad to get the greatest revenue from the club. “I’m comfortable with that. It will be unsettling for you guys, you’ll have favourite players but we need to be wise.”

Ange and Celtic have a plan, a plan to continuously reinvest and strengthen the team every year, and we are seeing that play out.

To me, these aren’t leaks from a bad egg inside the club, this is Celtic making chess moves through the media, and with Ange in charge, I believe those moves will turn out to be the correct ones.