It’s been a pretty disappointing last couple of days, eh?
But it’s easy to forget that we have had worse.
After the horror show that was Tuesday, we had the results of the tax case on Wednesday. This resulted in the appeal being rejected, and all sorts of overreactions from journalists and fans alike.
But we’re not going to dwell on it because it’s absolutely irrelevant. What was a legitimate approach at the time, already ruled to have given no sporting advantage, is now seen in retrospect as wrong. It was the players who benefited from paying less tax, just like all of those who have used dodgy “movie” deals or any other tax reducing scheme. The club still had to pay the cash, and we suffered for that mismanagement in a big way.
The fact is – we were on our knees, ripe to be slapped about, and Celtic decided to not back Strachan and kept us in it. Even during Walter’s second spell, they could have done far more. Quite why they’re so focused on that rather than current domination is strange at the very least.
When it comes to transfer rumours, there’s not a huge amount to discuss. Confirmation of McKay leaving, Dorrans hopefully confirmed by the time you read this – that’s all we have that’s progressed since last week. Reported moves for Jamie Walker or Kenny McLean haven’t had any confirmed updates. There was a couple of reports linking us to George Thomas, a young winger out of contract who played for Coventry, but I suspect that’s been an agent using our name to push through a deal.
It’s also pretty quiet in terms of players leaving the club. Whilst we’ve sold McKay and knocked back an offer for Tavernier, it would seem things are moving a bit more sedately here. O’Halloran, Forrester, Dodoo and Kiernan are all but confirmed not to be part of the squad going forward, but we’ve yet to get them off the books.
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Despite being used in the first leg of the Progres tie, I also think Waghorn will be sold this summer. He’s got one year left on his contract and there’s been no moves to offer him anything.
It’s worth taking a second to discuss the McKay deal. I really rate him as a player, and hoped he would kick on this season. Despite that, I agree that he had to be sold, because he clearly didn’t want to put in the fight to stay. Whether he just preferred to work with Warburton, or felt it wasn’t worth the effort, there’s no way we can criticise the sale too highly. Maybe the fee is pretty low, even taking his contractual situation into account. Time will give the answer on that. He gave us some cracking performances and good memories, so I hope he has a great career.
With the Director of Football starting next week, I think we’ll see some new names linked to the club. If we manage to move on as many as we want, we still need a few players in certain areas of the squad. Many will think after Tuesday that we need a number of players, but we obviously don’t have that sort of resource.
As the title of this article suggests, things aren’t as bad as we feel right now. The result was horrible, the tax case an annoyance, but they’ll both be forgotten in time. We’ve got loads of good stuff going on, and it was only a week ago we were all buzzing. Let’s hope for some more good news by next weeks round-up!
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