John Hartson has openly criticised Norwich City for their high valuation of Adam Idah, expressing frustration as Celtic struggles to secure the striker on a permanent basis.
Celtic had a £4 million bid rejected at the start of the summer and there has been no second approach. Tensions are beginning to build on all sides of the deal.
Hartson spoke on Go Radio, voicing his concerns about Celtic’s forward options and urging the club to improve their attacking lineup, especially for competitions like the Champions League.
Reflecting on Idah’s time at Celtic, where he significantly boosted his profile after a successful loan spell, Hartson feels Norwich is now capitalising unfairly on the striker’s enhanced market value.
He pointed out that prior to joining Celtic, Idah was not a regular starter for Norwich, suggesting that Celtic played a crucial role in his development and increased visibility.
Accusing Norwich City of “taking the mick”, he said: “I would like another centre forward in, I don’t want to get the window out the way and we’ve still only got Kyogo. I think they’re on the lookout for one but they’re dragging their heels with Idah at the minute, I don’t know what’s happening.
“I hope the club don’t think they’ve got enough domestically. Because they have got enough domestically but I’d like to see Brendan Rodgers bring in some quality to add to the quality they already have. In the Champions League, you need that quality.
“I’m a little bit aggrieved with Norwich because he wasn’t in the team, he was on the bench. Celtic gave him a platform to make a name for himself, gave him game time which he wasn’t getting a lot of at Norwich. Now he’s done really well, you half expect it because clubs get as greedy as they can and try and get as much out the players as they can.
“But to be asking reportedly £6.5/7/8million, and he’s only been playing regularly for six months. I know it’s business but I’m a little bit aggrieved by that. I think they’re taking the mick a bit.”
If BBJ is right, this is dangerously poor management by the new guy there! He is risking bad blood among the rest of the team in the dressing room.
He forgets players bond with each other far easier than they do with managers.
I suspect his inexperience has him believing if he digs his heels in he looks like the big guy, but the reverse is more likely to be true. This may cost him his job.
Celtic need to move on from Idah and just get another quality striker in. Idah is not happening at the ridiculous price Norwich are asking, simple as that.
At the end of the day he has a contract for the next four years and that is the price Norwich want for him.
In January Idah clearly was a panic, last minute deal for Celtic considering we didn’t ask for a “buy clause” in the loan deal.
Whatever targets, if any, that we had in January didn’t materialise so we ended up going for Idah.
Why do I suspect he was a panic move?
Well as everyone points out, he was third choice striker so he would have been easy, even for our incompetent Board, to get him anytime in January but the fact we waited until the last half of the last day to go for him speaks volumes.
So if we couldn’t get the other deals over the line in January, when we are told it is difficult to get players, what has happened to all of those targets in this window. We still can’t get any of them in.
I agree entirely on all points.
It’s now clear that the Celtic Board has no intention of spending any significant money on quality additions to the squad this window, or any other window for that matter. Brendan Rodgers knows this. He’s a shrewd manager who knows the script well at Celtic. Part of his job is to provide sufficient blarney to the fans to make it appear that things are happening. If you listen carefully to his statements he always qualifies recruitment promises with “hopefully”. In other words, nothing is guaranteed and nothing will probably be the way the window closes. There also seems to be this litany of names linked with moves to Celtic, names that never materialise into signings. It’s all smoke and mirrors, all part of the scam to make us believe that real effort is going in to finding quality players at the right price.
I predict that this window will close with no more than one more player being added to the squad. It will be either Adam Idah or another striker who fits the maximum £4m price cap they offered Norwich City for Idah. So, we’ll be back to exactly the same team as last year, the team that was humiliated in Europe and would have lost the league had it not been for the dramatic collapse of the other lot across the city. All the noise and all the blarney is to designed distract everyone from that reality. There is simply no ambition at suit level, never was and never will be. Celtic is just a business for them.