You all know I love a good transfer story right?
There is genuinely nothing better than Celtic being linked to players whilst we sit pretty at the top of the league and going for a treble.
Why?
Because it shows the manager and the board are hungry to build on the success we are having.
But there are transfer stories and then there is just plain fantasy.
Especially when it comes to players being reported to join the club simply because of betting patterns in the bookmakers.
The Glasgow Times today ran a story and worded it in a way that looked like Celtic was on some sort of ‘list’ that the Portuguese superstar had of clubs he wanted to join:
Celtic Cristiano Ronaldo outsiders as next club list emerges https://t.co/sK2ylLmQ0S
— Glasgow Times Football (@GT_Football_) November 24, 2022
On closer inspection, there is no such list and it is a story built on people placing money on the player in the off chance that he could don the green and white hoops.
Quite why it was reported as newsworthy is beyond me.
Every single Celtic fan knows without question that this is a move that will never happen. Ever. Which is why no one even commented on the story.
Well, some people did, but they clearly didn’t even bother reading past the headline to find out what the basis of this ‘story’ was.
But let’s just indulge it for a minute. Let’s say Ronaldo released a statement to claim he wanted to sign for us. Let’s look at the BASIC wage he is on:
Ronaldo’s initial salary at #mufc [£775,000 p/w] accounted for 10.5 per cent of the club’s wage bill. Failure to qualify for the #UCL saw salaries drop by 25 per cent, Ronaldo's to £580,000 p/w, which still accounted for around 10 per cent of the total bill. [@TelegraphDucker]
— The United Stand (@UnitedStandMUFC) November 23, 2022
Even if he took a 90% pay cut on the bottom rate salary (can’t even believe I typed that) he would still command a weekly wage of £58k per week!
The board would never sanction that kind of expenditure for a 37-year-old. And, yes, we could make it back on commercial deals but, come on!
Is Ronaldo going to rock up to Dingwall on a cold Wednesday night in February?
Plus, Ange wouldn’t entertain someone with that kind of profile at the club. It would likely set our progress back, not take us forward.
So let’s just stop this now before anyone else in the mainstream media embarrasses themselves.
No, Ronaldo is NOT coming to Celtic! Everyone who knows anything about the game knows the EBT committee in Govan are working the returns of all empties to see how much they can muster for their illegal EBT offer.